UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

B.M. 


THE  WILD   IRISHMAN 


THE  WILD 

IRISHMAN 


BY 

T.  W.  H.  CROSLAND 


Author  of 
The  Unspeakable  Scot'1'' 


NEW   YORK 

D.   APPLETON   AND   COMPANY 
1905 


COPYRIGHT,  1905,  BY 
D.   APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 


Published  October,  1905. 


PREFACE   TO   THE   AMERICAN 
EDITION 

THE  people  of  America  may  or  may  not 
indulge  kindly  views  of  the  Irish  community ; 
but  there  cannot  be  the  slightest  question  that 
the  Irish  of  Ireland  have  kindlier  feelings 
for  America  than  ever  they  have  had  for 
England.  To  the  Irish  of  Ireland,  in  fact, 
America  has  long  stood  in  the  relation  of  a 
sort  of  promised  land,  and  they  have  a  habit 
of  turning  their  thoughts  thitherward  even 
when  small  matters  are  concerned.  There 
is  a  tale  of  an  elderly  lady  of  Galway  who, 
on  being  informed  by  her  medical  attendant 
that  it  was  desirable  that  she  should  consult 
a  dental  specialist,  set  forth  incontinently  for 
New  York  to  the  total  neglect  of  London. 
She  believed  that  of  the  two  places,  New 
v 


1 


PREFACE 

York  was  the  friendlier.  I  am  informed  that, 
broadly  speaking,  New  York  is  policed  by 
Irish  Americans  and  that  the  American  Irish- 
man makes  a  rather  useful  subordinate 
municipal  official.  Be  this  as  it  may,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  very  considerable  num- 
bers of  Irishmen  contrive  to  do  themselves 
a  great  deal  better  in  the  United  States  than 
they  could  ever  have  hoped  to  do  in  their 
own  native  Erin.  To  those  Americans  and 
American  Irish  who  happen  to  be  at  all  in- 
terested in  the  present  condition  and  pros- 
pects of  the  green  country,  I  venture  to  offer 
the  following  pages  for  what  they  are  worth. 

T.  W.  H.  C. 


VI 


CONTENTS 


I. — DISTRESSFUL      .....  I 

II. — THE  SHILLELAGH       .          .          .          .11 

III. — BLARNEY  .          .          .          .          .19 

IV. — WHISKY  ......        29 

V. — THE  PATHRIOT  ....        36 

VI. — ORANGEMEN      .....        42 

VII. — THE  Low  SCOTCH    ....        50 

VIII. — PRIESTCRAFT     .....        60 

IX. — MORALS.          .          .          .          .          .71 

X. — PRETTY  WOMEN        .          .          .          .91 

XI. — THE  LONDON  IRISH.          .          .          .100 

XII. — TOM  MOORE  .          .          .          .          .105 

XIII.— W.    B.    YEATS  .  .          .          .II? 

XIV. — WIT  AND  HUMOR     .          .          .          .130 

XV. — MORE  WIT  AND  HUMOR    .          .          .141 

XVI.— DIRT 151 

XVII. — THE  TOURIST 158 

XVIII. — POTATOES 169 

XIX.— PIGS 179 

XX. — EMIGRATION      .          .          .          .          .187 
vii 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 


CHAPTER    I 

DISTRESSFUL 

THE  person  who  invented  the  Irish  ques- 
tion may  or  may  not  deserve  well  of  his 
species.  In  a  sense,  of  course,  there  has  been 
an  Irish  question  since  the  beginning  of  his- 
tory. But  it  is  only  within  the  last  century 
or  so  that  we  have  begun  to  spell  it  with  a 
big  Q.  That  big  Q  perhaps  attained  its 
largest  proportions  during  the  eighties  of  the 
last  century,  and  associated,  as  it  usually  was, 
with  a  capital  G,  which  stood  for  Gladstone, 
and  a  capital  P,  which  stood  for  somebody 
else,  it  certainly  did  yeoman  service  wherever 
a  use  for  letters  could  be  found.  At  the  time 
of  Mr.  Gladstone's  Home  Rule  campaign 
i 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

the  existence  of  a  highly  insistent  Irish  ques- 
tion could  not  be  doubted.  A  good  deal  of 
water  has  flowed,  under  the  bridges  since  then, 
however,  and  at  the  present  moment,  and  in 
view  of  the  present  situation  of  Irish  affairs, 
one  is  tempted  to  wonder  whether  there  now 
exists,  or  whether  there  really  has  ever  ex- 
isted, an  Irish  question  with  a  big  Q  at  all. 
It  is  true  that  at  the  time  of  writing  there  is 
an  actual  and  undesirable  famine  raging  in 
Connemara.  It  is  true  that  the  population 
of  the  country  is  on  the  decline,  and  that  the 
standard  of  comfort  among  the  people  will 
not  bear  comparison  with  the  standard  of 
comfort  in  any  other  country  in  the  world, 
unless  it  be  in  the  poorer  and  bleaker  regions 
of  Kamchatka;  and  it  is  true  also  that  Irish- 
men as  a  body  continue  to  exercise  themselves 
both  at  street  corners,  and  on  all  sorts  of 
platforms,  in  a  habit  of  rhetoric,  which  many 
years  of  shouting  have  made  second  nature 
with  them.  For  all  that,  the  Irish  question 
as  a  portentous  and  vital  matter  appears  to 
2 


DISTRESSFUL 

be  somewhat  played  out.  One  may  safely 
say  that  in  Ireland,  at  any  rate,  it  has  been 
reduced  to  an  obscurity  which  allows  of  its 
being  now  spelled  with  about  the  smallest 
"  q  "  in  ordinary  use  among  printers.  In 
England  it  has  been  allowed  to  disappear, 
in  favor  of  the  Russo-Japanese  War,  Pro- 
tection, and  Do  We  Believe  ?  On  the  whole, 
though  it  no  doubt  harrows  the  souls  of  the 
horde  of  carpet-baggers  which  have  come  to 
us  out  of  Ireland,  this  condition  of  affairs  is 
exceedingly  salutary  for  Ireland  itself.  Now 
that  the  factions,  and  the  tumult,  and  the  tur- 
bulence, and  the  wrangling  have  died  down, 
or  at  least  been  in  large  measure  abated,  the 
facts  about  Ireland  are  for  the  first  time  in 
history  beginning,  as  it  were,  to  swim  into 
our  ken.  We  are  beginning  to  perceive,  for 
example,  that  out  of  the  quarrels  and  blood- 
shed of  the  past  hundred  years  Ireland  has 
emerged  triumphant.  It  has  been  a  case  of 
a  bankrupt,  downtrodden  and  dwindling  peo- 
ple's fight  against  a  rich  and  powerful  domi- 

3 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

nant  people,  and  the  weaker  side  has  proved 
clearly  that  in  the  long  run  God  is  on  the 
side  of  "  justice."  To  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses Ireland  is  at  the  present  moment  in 
full  possession  of  all  that  she  herself  has  felt 
it  reasonable  to  demand.  She  has  the  fran- 
chise, she  has  land  laws  which  are  almost 
socialistic  in  the  benefits  they  offer  to  the  cul- 
tivators of  the  soil,  and  she  has  local  self- 
government.  More  than  all,  she  has  herself 
begun  to  recognize  that  the  disposition  of 
England  toward  her  is  becoming  year  by  year 
less  arrogant,  less  implacable,  less  contemptu- 
ous, and  less  severe.  It  has  been  said  that 
Erin's  appeals  for  reasonable  treatment  at 
the  hands  of  England  have  had  to  be  made 
by  violence  of  the  most  brutal  and  terroriz- 
ing kind.  She  has  stood  before  us  with  the 
head  of  a  landlord  in  one  hand  and  the  tail 
of  a  cow  in  the  other,  and  screamed  till  we 
gave  her  what  she  wanted.  And  always  in 
a  large  measure  we  have  succumbed.  And 
the  singular  part  of  it  is  that  in  no  instance 
4 


DISTRESSFUL 

have  we  had  cause,  nor  do  we  appear  likely  to 
have  cause,  to  regret  it.  Of  course,  that  crown 
and  summit  of  Irish  blisses,  Home  Rule,  has 
not  yet  been  vouchsafed  to  her.  But  this, 
I  believe,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  Ireland  her- 
self is  still  making  up  her  mind  whether  she 
really  wants  it.  Half  Ireland  says,  "  Give  us 
Home  Rule,"  the  other  half  says,  "  Please 
don't;  "  and  the  two  parties  seem  to  be  get- 
ting on  very  well  together  by  agreeing  to  dif- 
fer. This  is  a  true  and  natural  settlement  of 
a  problem  which,  as  I  believe,  is  purely  arti- 
ficial, arising  out  of  the  exigencies  of  party 
and  the  jealousies  of  rival  demagogues, 
rather  than  out  of  the  desires  of  the  peo- 
ple. If  Ireland  in  her  heart  of  hearts  de- 
sired Home  Rule,  she  would  have  it  within 
the  next  couple  of  years.  She  has  the  good 
sense  to  know  that,  however  fascinating  the 
theory  of  Home  Rule  may  appear,  the  prac- 
tise of  it  for  her  would  be  difficult  and  irk- 
some, if  not  altogether  disastrous.  Both 
sides  are  agreed  that  Home  Rule  for  Ireland 

5 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

means  an  immediate  spell  of  civil  war  for 
Ireland.  The  Irish  Catholic  will  tell  you 
this,  and  the  Irish  Protestant  is  equally  clear 
about  it.  In  view  of  the  condition  and  nature 
of  the  country,  such  a  war  were  a  calamity 
to  be  staved  off  at  pretty  well  any  cost,  even 
if  it  were  certain — and  it  is  by  no  means  cer- 
tain— that  the  subsequent  benefits  would  be 
appreciable  and  lasting.  The  politicians  will 
tell  you  that  it  is  possible  to  have  in  Ireland 
what  is  somewhat  prettily  called  a  "  union 
of  hearts."  "  The  union  of  hearts  which  I 
desire,"  says  one  of  them,  "  is  a  union  of 
Irishmen  of  all  classes  and  of  all  creeds,  from 
the  north  to  the  south,  from  the  east  to  the 
west;  landlords  and  tenants,  Catholics  and 
Protestants,  Orange  and  Green;  and  I  look 
to  this  union  as  the  surest  way  of  bringing 
about  the  national  regeneration  of  our  coun- 
try." Which  is  exceedingly  beautiful,  but 
amounts  to  asking  for  the  moon.  Oil  and 
water  cannot  be  made  to  mix,  and  in  a  coun- 
try where  a  couple  of  cardinals  and  a  number 
6 


DISTRESSFUL 

of  bishops  were  lately  stoned  by  a  rabblement 
of  Protestants,  the  union  of  hearts  may  be 
reckoned  still  a  great  way  off.  Holy  Ireland 
— and  I  think  it  is  rather  to  her  credit — will 
never  be  brought  to  do  what  England  and 
Scotland  have  managed  to  do,  namely  to  set 
the  political  or  material  interest  in  front  of 
the  religious  or  spiritual  interest.  Catholics 
and  Protestants  in  Ireland  are  Catholic  and 
Protestant  from  head  to  foot  and  right 
through,  and  you  will  never  induce  them  to 
forget  it.  All  the  same  it  is  not  impossible, 
with  the  exercise  of  a  little  charity  and  self- 
restraint,  for  the  lion  to  lie  down  with  the 
lamb  politically,  if  not  religiously,  and  this 
is  what  is  happening  in  Ireland.  In  other 
words  the  Irish  Catholics  and  Protestants 
have  tacitly  agreed  that  they  can  live  in  more 
or  less  amity  under  one  government,  provid- 
ing that  government  is  neither  an  Irish  Cath- 
olic government  nor  an  Irish  Protestant  gov- 
ernment, but  an  alien,  impartial  and  practi- 
cally secular  government. 

7 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

As  we  have  said,  the  Irish  question  as  a 
portent  and  terror  to  England  is  disappear- 
ing, if  indeed  it  has  not  already  disappeared. 
For  all  that,  the  fact  remains  that  Ireland 
in  the  main  is  a  distressful  country.  Thack- 
eray's Snooks  gives  it  as  his  opinion  that  "  of 
all  the  wum  countwith  that  I  ever  wead  of, 
hang  me  if  Ireland  ithn't  the  wummetht." 
"  Wum,"  gay  and  irrepressible  epithet  though 
it  may  be,  is  really  and  deep  down  not  the 
epithet;  whereas  "distressful"  is.  There 
are  people  in  the  world  who  are  born  to 
misfortune,  whose  lives  are  touched  with  mel- 
ancholy from  beginning  to  end,  and  who  can- 
not be  brought  to  rejoice  even  by  Act  of  Par- 
liament. Ireland's  woes  may  be  said  to  be 
largely  temperamental  and  still  more  largely 
"  misfortunate."  Her  very  position  in  the 
geographical  scheme  of  things  is  strikingly 
lonesome  and  unhappy.  Practically  she  is  the 
last  outpost  of  Europe,  and  a  little  one  at 
that.  With  sheer  Atlantic  on  one  side  of  her, 
and  sixty  miles  of  sea  between  herself  and 
8 


DISTRESSFUL 

England,  it  is  impossible  for  her  to  get  rid 
of  a  certain  feeling  of  isolation  which  is  not 
good  for  the  spirits.  The  soft  rain  that  is  al- 
ways over  her  may  heighten  the  green  of  her 
meadows,  but  it  keeps  her  damp  and  watery 
and  preternaturally  boggy.  She  has  no  har- 
bors of  the  kind  that  are  essential  to  fisher- 
men, and  though  some  of  her  ports  may  be 
admirable,  there  is  little  in  the  country  that 
calls  for  the  use  of  them.  Thus  physically 
handicapped,  Ireland  has  necessarily  pro- 
duced a  people  who  are  in  all  respects  a  peo- 
ple to  themselves.  The  religious  faculty  in 
them  has  been  highly  developed,  the  com- 
mercial faculty  might  seem  to  have  been  left 
out  of  their  composition.  By  nature  they  are 
a  simple,  cheerful,  unambitious,  warm-hearted 
race,  and  they  have  suffered  accordingly.  Sir 
Francis  Drake,  or  some  instrument  of  his, 
planted  the  potato  upon  them.  James  I. 
planted  the  Scotch  on  them.  George  III. 
gave  them  a  Lord  Lieutenant  and  a  Secre- 
tary. The  potato,  the  Scotch,  and  Dublin 

3  9 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

Castle  have  been  the  three  bitter  curses  which 
have  brought  this  people  to  the  ghastliest 
social  and  political  passes.  All  three  are  in- 
eradicable, but  they  may  be  mitigated.  This 
is  what  Ireland  wants. 


10 


CHAPTER    II 

THE    SHILLELAGH 

As  the  Yorkshireman  is  said  to  sport  on 
his  escutcheon  a  flea,  a  fly,  and  a  flitch  of 
bacon,  so  in  the  popular  imagination  an 
Irishman  of  the  real  old  sort  is  usually  con- 
ceived in  association  with  a  pig,  a  pipe,  and 
a  shillelagh.  Rightly  considered,  one  sup- 
poses that  the  shillelagh  is  a  survival  of  the 
pre-historic  club.  In  any  case,  it  is  a  weapon 
of  some  character,  chiefly  notable  for  its 
handiness  in  the  matter  of  skull  cracking, 
and  believed  to  be  the  pride  and  joy  of  every 
Paddy  worth  his  salt.  The  shillelagh  has 
undoubtedly  earned  for  the  Irish  a  reputation 
for  roguish  and  heroic  delight  in  battle. 
"  Tread  on  the  tail  of  my  coat,  now,"  is 
supposed  to  be  forever  on  Irish  lips,  with 
immediate  results  in  the  article  of  broken 
ii 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

heads.  And  when  we  English  wish  the  use 
of  a  metaphor  for  rows  and  scuffles,  free 
fights  and  so  forth,  we  have  a  habit  of 
remarking  that  the  affair  amounted  to  "  a 
regular  Donnybrook  "  —  Donnybrook,  of 
course,  being  a  sort  of  feast  of  shillelaghs 
to  which  all  Ireland  was  wont  annually  to 
repair.  Of  the  number  of  shillelaghs  in 
Ireland  at  the  present  moment  the  blue 
books  give  no  account.  It  seems  to  me 
doubtful  whether  there  are  a  thousand  in 
the  whole  country.  One  may  travel  through 
Ireland  for  weeks  on  end,  and  come  across 
nothing  of  the  sort.  The  only  shillelagh 
I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  in  the  course 
of  a  recent,  lengthy  Irish  journey  was  in 
the  hands  of  a  very  ill-clad  youth  who 
looked  more  like  a  Lancashire  cotton 
operative  out  of  work  than  a  broth  of  a 
boy.  And  the  shillelagh  in  question  was 
of  polished  black  wood  without  knots,  and 
the  top  of  it  had  a  nickel  silver  knob,  like 
a  beau's  cane.  The  weapon,  indeed,  re- 
12 


THE    SHILLELAGH 

minded  one  of  nothing  so  much  as  a  Salmon 
&  Gluckstein,  silver-headed,  ebony  walking- 
stick,  cut  short.  The  owner  proudly  assured 
me  that  it  was  his  bit  of  a  blackthorn,  and 
the  finest  for  miles  around.  It  seems  more 
than  probable  that  the  shillelagh-notion  of 
an  Irishman  had  at  one  time  something  in  it. 
While  Donnybrook  Fair  has  been  suppressed, 
there  can  be  no  getting  away  from  the  fact 
that  there  once  was  a  Donnybrook,  and  a 
pretty  warm  one  to  boot.  Says  the  poet : 

"Who  has  e'er  had  the  luck  to  see  Donnybrook  Fair  ? 
An  Irishman,  all  in  his  glory,  is  there, 

With  his  sprig  of  shillelagh  and  shamrock  so  green ! 
His  clothes  spic  and  span  new,  without  e'er  a  speck, 
A  neat  Barcelona  tied  round  his  neat  neck  ; 
He  goes  to  a  tent,  and  he  spends  half  a  crown, 
He  meets  with  a  friend,  and  for  love  knocks  him  down 

With  his  sprig  of  shillelagh  and  shamrock  so  green ! ' ' 

"  And  for  love  knocks  him  down  "  is  quite 
in  the  "  rale  ould "  spirit.  A  spectator l 
of  the  Donnybrook  held  on  the  29th  August 

1  Prince  Puckler  Muskau,  quoted  by  Croker. 
13 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

1828,  described  it  as  follows:  "  I  rode  out 
again  to-day  for  the  first  time,  to  see  the 
fair  at  Donnybrook,  near  Dublin,  which  is  a 
kind  of  popular  festival.  Nothing,  indeed, 
can  be  more  national!  The  poverty,  the 
dirt,  and  the  wild  tumult  were  as  great 
as  the  glee  and  merriment  with  which  the 
cheapest  pleasures  were  enjoyed.  I  saw 
things  eaten  and  drunk  with  delight,  which 
forced  me  to  turn  my  head  quickly  away, 
to  remain  master  of  my  disgust.  Heat  and 
dust,  crowd  and  stench  made  it  impossible 
to  stay  long;  but  these  do  not  annoy  the 
natives.  There  were  many  hundred  tents, 
all  ragged,  like  the  people,  and  adorned 
with  tawdry  rags  instead  of  flags;  many 
contented  themselves  with  a  cross  on  a 
hoop;  one  had  hoisted  a  dead  and  half- 
putrid  cat  as  a  sign.  The  lowest  sort  of 
rope-dancers  and  posture-makers  exercised 
their  toilsome  vocation  on  stages  of  planks, 
and  dressed  in  shabby  finery,  dancing  and 
grimacing  in  the  dreadful  heat  till  they 


THE    SHILLELAGH 

were  completely  exhausted.  A  third  part 
of  the  public  lay,  or  rather  rolled,  about 
drunk;  others  ate,  screamed,  shouted  and 
fought.  The  women  rode  about,  sitting  two 
or  three  upon  an  ass,  pushing  their  way 
through  the  crowd,  smoked  with  great  de- 
light, and  coquetted  with  their  sweethearts." 
It  is  notable,  however,  that  our  eye-witness 
continues :  "  My  reverence  for  truth  com- 
pels me  to  add,  that  not  the  slightest 
trace  of  English  brutality  was  to  be  per- 
ceived; they  were  more  like  French  people, 
though  their  gaiety  was  mingled  with  more 
humor  and  more  genuine  good-nature;  both 
of  which  are  national  traits  of  the  Irish,  and 
are  always  doubled  by  poteen." 

Not  only  is  Donnybrook  gone,  but  the 
whole  atmosphere  which  rendered  Donny- 
brook possible  appears  to  have  gone  with 
it.  The  knocking  down  of  a  friend  for 
love  or  out  of  sheer  gaiety  and  volatility 
of  soul  no  longer  ranks  among  the  Irish- 
man's accomplishments.  If  he  fights  at  all, 
15 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

which  is  seldom,  he  fights  now  with  clenched 
teeth  and  a  fierce  hatred  at  his  heart,  and 
usually  it  is  about  religion  and  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  either  fun  or  poteen. 
In  Dublin  no  more  fighting  goes  on  than 
occurs  in  the  average  English  city  of  the 
same  size.  In  Belfast  the  fighting  is  fre- 
quent, but  it  is  eminently  Scotch,  and  there- 
fore not  to  be  charged  against  Ireland.  Out 
of  Ulster,  there  is  scarcely  any  fighting  at 
all,  poteen  or  no  poteen.  At  the  same  time 
in  one  city  out  of  Ulster,  which  I  will  not 
name,  I  was  advised  by  the  proprietor  of 
an  hotel  to  prolong  my  stay  because  "  we 
are  expecting  riots  on  Monday."  Whether 
the  riots  came  off  or  not  I  do  not  know, 
but  I  saw  no  accounts  of  them  in  the  papers. 
It  is,  of  course,  common  knowledge  that, 
shillelaghs  laid  on  one  side,  the  Irishman 
makes  an  admirable  soldier.  In  point  of 
fact  he  is  a  much  better  soldier  than  the  Scot, 
though  he  has  never  had  the  credit  for 
it.  The  best  English  generals  from  Well- 
16 


THE    SHILLELAGH 

ington  to  Lord  Roberts  have  been  Irishmen, 
which  is  paradox,  not  a  "  bull."  The  Irish 
never  run  away;  in  our  late  wars  certain  non- 
Irish  regiments,  which  were  neither  English 
nor  Welsh,  did  run  away.  It  is  significant 
that  Mr.  Kipling's  soldiers — in  Soldiers 
Three  for  example — are  Irish,  Cockney,  and 
Yorkshire,  and  that  the  Irishman  is  set  down 
for  the  smartest  man.  I  have  seen  it  re- 
marked, and  I  believe  it  can  be  justified  out 
of  the  military  histories,  that  while  the  Irish 
and  English  regiments  have  usually  done  the 
rough  and  tumble  hand-to-hand  fighting  in 
our  most  famous  engagements,  the  gentle- 
men with  the  bare  knees  have  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be  sent  in  at  the  tail  end  of  the 
trouble,  merely  to  execute  a  little  ornamental 
sweeping  up.  To  the  eye  of  officers  and 
women  "  nothing  looks  nicer  "  than  kilts  and 
spats.  To  disarrange  them  were  a  pity; 
therefore  wherever  possible  we  shall  hold 
them  "  in  reserve."  On  the  parade  ground 
and  in  processions  the  same  thing  applies; 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

the  plaudits  of  the  crowd  being  invariably 
forthcoming  for  the  "  bonnie  bare-legged 
laddies "  newly  enlisted,  mayhap,  out  of 
Glasgow  and  Dumfries,  while  "  seasoned 
Irish  warriors  "  go  past  without  a  hand-clap. 
But  it  is  the  kilts  that  do  it.  There  may 
be  nothing  in  this,  and  anyway  I  do  not  sup- 
pose that  the  Irish  care  twopence.  But  the 
points  for  us  to  remember  while  we  are  on 
this  part  of  our  subject  are,  that  the  shille- 
lagh is  an  effete  weapon,  that  in  Irish  dif- 
ferences the  principle  of  "  a  word  and  a 
blow  "  does  not  prevail,  and  that  the  Irish 
soldier  is  very  competent  and  very  coura- 
geous. 


18 


CHAPTER    III 

BLARNEY 

BLARNEY  has  come  to  mean  a  certain 
adroitness  and  winningness  of  speech  sup- 
posed to  be  peculiar  to  the  Irish.  If  an 
Irishman  open  his  mouth,  the  English  and 
Scotch  insist  on  assuming  that  they  are  being 
treated  to  blarney.  The  persons  who  affect 
Messrs.  Cook's  tours  hang  on  to  the  words 
of  every  Irishman  they  meet,  particularly  if 
he  be  a  jarvey,  and  wait  lovingly  and  with 
bated  breath  for  the  same  phenomenon. 
There  are  no  snakes  in  Ireland,  and,  sad 
to  relate,  there  is  very  little  blarney.  Broadly 
speaking,  the  people  seem  too  poverty- 
stricken  and  too  apathetic  for  talk  of  any 
kind,  much  less  for  that  sprightly  loquacity 
and  skil fulness  of  retort  which  we  call  blar- 

19. 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

ney.  The  Irish  jarvey,  who  is  commonly 
believed  to  be  an  adept  in  the  art,  is  just 
as  much  a  disappointment  as  the  London 
cabby.  Even  in  "  the  noble  city  of  Dublin  " 
you  find,  as  a  rule,  that  you  are  being  driven 
by  a  dull,  flea-bitten,  porter-full  person,  who 
has  really  not  two  words  to  say  for  himself. 
That  he  is  a  daring  and  reckless  driver  I 
am  quite  willing  to  admit;  that  he  has  a  pas- 
sion for  stout  and  whisky  goes  without  say- 
ing; but  that  he  is  a  wit,  or  a  humorist,  or 
a  wheedling  talker,  or  in  any  sense  gifted 
above  ordinary  hack-drivers,  I  deny.  In  the 
smaller  centers  of  population  and  in  the 
country  districts  he  is  even  duller  and  more 
flea-bitten  and  more  taciturn.  When  he  tries 
to  charge  you  treble  fare,  which  is  his  usual 
practise,  he  does  it  with  a  snap  and  grace- 
lessly;  as  a  pointer-out  of  local  monuments 
he  lacks  both  salt  and  information;  he  has 
no  gift  for  entertainment,  and  he  drinks  sul- 
lenly and  with  a  careful  eye  on  the  clock. 
As  for  the  Irish  waiters,  grooms,  handy  men, 
20 


BLARNEY 

railway  porters,  and  kindred  creatures,  of 
whose  powers  of  humorous  persuasion  and 
repartee  so  much  has  been  written,  I  have  no 
hesitation  in  pronouncing  them  to  be  a  sad, 
uncertain,  curt,  fiddle-faced  company,  with 
scarcely  a  smile  or  the  materials  for  a  smile 
among  them.  Their  conversation  is  monosyl- 
labic, their  manner  barely  civil,  their  appre- 
hension slow,  and  their  habit  slack  and  per- 
functory. And  they  are  about  as  blarnified 
as  the  Trafalgar  Square  lions.  Of  the  peas- 
antry I  can  only  say  that  cheerfulness, 
whether  of  notion  or  word,  is  not  nowadays 
their  strong  point.  They  have  a  great  way 
of  saying  "  your  honor  "  to  you  if  you  are 
a  man,  and  "  your  ladyship's  honor  "  if  you 
are  a  woman;  but  after  that  the  amount  of 
blarney  to  be  got  out  of  them  is  infinitesimal. 
Grinding  poverty,  short-commons,  a  solitary 
life  on  some  dreary  mountain-side,  and  a  fine 
view  of  the  workhouse,  do  not  tend  to 
sharpen  the  Irish  tongue  any  more  than  they 
sharpen  the  Irish  wit.  On  the  whole,  there- 

21 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

fore,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  nearly  all 
the  blarney  that  should  be  in  Ireland  has  for 
some  reason  or  other  taken  unto  itself  wings 
and  flown  away.  The  people  are  no  longer 
racy  of  the  soil.  Even  the  gentry,  who  once 
had  the  credit  of  being  roguish  and  devil- 
may-care  to  a  fault,  are  become  sad  and  som- 
ber and  flat  of  speech.  The  milk  of  human 
kindness  in  the  Irish  blood  appears,  in  short, 
to  have  gone  sour,  and  in  place  of  the 
old  disposition  to  humor  we  have  a  tendency 
to  cynicism  and  vituperative  remark.  And 
when  an  Irishman  turns  cynic  or  vituperator 
he  takes  a  wonderful  deal  of  beating,  as  wit- 
ness the  utterances  in  Parliament  and  else- 
where of  that  choice  body  of  gentlemen 
known  as  the  Irish  Party,  or  the  proceedings 
of  the  Dublin  Corporation,  or  the  lucubra- 
tions of  the  Irish  press.  A  singular  exhi- 
bition of  this  particular  Irish  weakness  has 
quite  lately  been  offered  us  by  no  less  a  per- 
son than  Mr.  Samuel  M.  Hussey,  who,  I 
believe,  rather  prides  himself  on  having  been 

22 


BLARNEY 

described  as  the  best  abused  man  in  Ireland. 
Of  Mr.  Gladstone,  Mr.  Hussey  writes  as 
follows : 

"  If  Napoleon  was  the  scourge  of  Europe, 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  the  most  malevolent 
imp  of  mischief  that  ever  ruined  any  one 
country.  ...  I  heard  him  introduce  the 
motion  [The  Land  Act  of  1881]  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  his  speech  was  a 
truly  marvelous  feat  of  oratory.  He  was  in- 
terrupted on  all  sides  of  the  House,  and  in 
a  speech  of  nearly  five  hours  in  length  never 
once  lost  the  thread  of  his  discourse.  As  far 
as  I  could  judge,  he  never,  even  by  accident, 
let  slip  one  word  of  truth. 

"  To  do  them  justice,  the  Irish  Members 
gave  such  an  exhibition  of  blackguardism  as 
has  no  parallel  on  earth,  though  it  earned 
but  the  mildest  rebuke  from  their  obsequious 
ally,  Mr.  Gladstone. 

"  Mr.  Gladstone  considered  that  if  you 
gave  a  scoundrel  a  vote  it  made  him  into  a 
philanthropist,  whereas  events  proved  it 

23 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

made  him  an  eager  accessory  of  murder,  out- 
rage, and  every  other  crime." 

It  is  only  fair  to  Mr.  Hussey  to  say  that 
he  himself  has  received  as  good  as  he  gives. 
For  example,  an  Irish  demagogue  once 
treated  him  to  the  following: 

"  Sam  Hussey  is  a  vulture  with  a  broken 
beak,  and  he  laid  his  voracious  talons  on  the 
conscience  of  the  voters.  (Boos.)  The  ugly 
scowl  of  Sam  Hussey  came  down  upon  them. 
He  wanted  to  try  the  influence  of  his  dark 
nature  on  the  poor  people.  (Groans.) 
Where  was  the  legitimate  influence  of  such  a 
man  ?  Was  it  in  the  white  terror  he  diffused  ? 
Was  it  not  the  espionage,  the  network  of 
spies  with  which  he  surrounded  his  lands? 
He  denied  that  a  man  who  managed  property 
had  for  that  reason  a  shadow  of  a  shade  of 
influence  to  justify  him  in  asking  a  tenant 
for  his  vote.  What  had  they  to  thank  him 
for?" 

A  voice :   "  Rack  rents." 

"  They  knew  the  man  from  his  boyhood, 
24 


BLARNEY 

from  his  gossoonhood.  He  knew  him  when 
he  began  with  a  collop  of  sheep  as  his  prop- 
erty in  the  world.  (Laughter.)  Long  be- 
fore he  got  God's  mark  on  him.  It  was  not 
the  man's  fault  but  his  misfortune  that  he 
got  no  education.  (Laughter.)  He  had  in 
that  parish  schoolmasters  who  could  teach 
him  grammar  for  the  next  ten  years.  The 
man  was  in  fact  a  Uriah  Heep  among  Kerry 
landlords."  (Cheers.) 

Here  surely  is  blarney  with  a  vengeance. 
Among  a  people  which  was  otherwise  than 
glib  of  expression  such  writing  and  such  ora- 
tory would  be  difficult  to  evolve.  When 
presumably  cultivated  men,  for  Mr.  Hussey's 
assailant  in  this  instance  was  a  priest,  allow 
themselves  to  indulge  in  such  childish  objur- 
gation, what  wonder  is  it  that  the  common- 
alty should  be  found  to  have  lost  their  sense 
of  what  is  proper  to  decent  speech  and  reason- 
able argument.  The  demagogues  of  Ireland 
have  indubitably  gone  a  great  way  toward 
ruining  the  native  taste  and  innate  good 

3  25 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

breeding  of  the  Irish  people.  Like  the  ha'- 
penny papers  of  England  they  have  made 
their  fortunes  and  their  power  by  the  degra- 
dation of  the  masses.  It  is  possible  that  the 
poverty  of  the  country  left  them  absolutely 
without  other  weapons  wherewith  to  fight 
the  haughty  national  enemy,  England;  it  is 
certain  that  without  these  demagogues,  and 
without  their  raging  and  blistering  words, 
and  the  foul  and  brutal  actions  which  fre- 
quently followed  them,  landlordism  in  Ire- 
land would  never  have  been  scotched.  As 
it  is,  the  landlord  has  been  put  in  his  place 
and  the  chances  of  the  natural  heirs  of  the 
soil  have  been  greatly  enhanced.  No  drastic 
revolution  of  this  kind  can  be  brought  about 
without  loss  even  to  the  winning  side.  And 
in  my  opinion  not  the  least  of  the  losses  of 
the  winning  side  in  this  matter  has  been  the 
transformation  of  blarney  into  flatness  and 
commination.  Under  the  heel  of  the  tyrant 
the  Irish  people  retained  their  faculty  for 
mirth  and  mirthful  speech;  the  exhortations 
26 


BLARNEY 

of  the  demagogue  and  the  agitator  have 
brought  them  freedom,  opportunity  and  a 
distinct  abatement  of  spirits.  As  the  world 
goes,  one  is  now  compelled  to  reckon  Ireland 
in  the  same  category  that  one  reckons  those 
innocuous  islets  named  Man  and  Wight. 
There  is  more  devil  in  the  Isle  of  Dogs  than 
all  Ireland  is  for  the  moment  in  a  position 
to  show.  It  is  not  Ireland's  fault,  and  it  is 
not  England's  fault;  it  is  the  horrible  fault 
of  the  nature  of  things.  Whatever  has  hap- 
pened in  the  past  has  happened  because  noth- 
ing better  nor  worse  could  in  the  nature  of 
things  have  happened.  What  will  happen 
in  the  future  remains  to  be  seen.  It  may 
be  peace  and  the  rehabilitation  of  a  kindly, 
lively,  and  interesting  people ;  it  may  be  peace 
and  the  dullest  sorts  of  apathy  and  decay.  In 
any  case  it  will  be  peace.  The  Times,  which, 
after  the  Saturday  Review,  is  admittedly  the 
least  consistent  journal  published  on  this  foot- 
stool, has  frequently  been  reproved  over  the 
mouth  for  remarking  years  ago  that  "  In  a 
27 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

short  time,  a  Catholic  Celt  will  be  as  rare 
on  the  banks  of  the  Shannon  as  a  red  Indian 
on  the  shores  of  Manhattan."  This  in  effect 
was  prophecy,  though  it  is  a  hundred  to 
one  that  the  Times  did  not  know  it.  If 
the  resilient  and  recuperative  powers  of  the 
Irish  people  have  not  been  destroyed  there 
is  hope  for  the  Irish  people  in  Ireland.  If 
those  powers  have  been  destroyed  there  is 
no  hope  for  the  Irish  people  in  Ireland. 
Blarney  even  of  the  vituperative  order  will 
go  entirely  out,  and  the  low  Scotch  will  come 
entirely  in.  I  will  do  the  low  Scotch  the 
credit  of  saying,  that  if  they  had  their  way, 
and  no  Irish  Catholics  to  contend  with,  they 
could  make  Ireland  a  highly  successful  busi- 
ness proposition  inside  a  quarter  of  a  century. 
Whether  they  will  ever  get  the  chance  is 
on  the  knees  of  the  gods.  For  my  own 
part,  and  this  is  not  blarney,  I  hope  sincerely 
that  they  never  will. 


28 


CHAPTER    IV 

WHISKY 

THE  Universe  as  we  know  it  abounds  in 
enigmas.  And  perhaps  the  most  stupendous 
enigma  of  all  of  them  is  called  whisky.  In 
Scotland  whisky  is  the  universal  ichor  and 
panacea.  In  Ireland  a  kind  of  whisky  which 
is  unquestionably  whisky,  but  not  Scotch, 
stands  in  the  same  friendly  relation  to  the 
people.  In  England  we  drink  both  kinds, 
lying  thus  between  the  devil  and  the  deep 
sea.  There  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt 
that  the  baser  sorts  of  whisky  are  Scotch,  and 
that  the  primal,  more  edifying  and  more  in- 
spiring sorts — if  we  only  knew  it — are  Irish. 
He  who  drinks  beer  thinks  beer.  He  who 
drinks  whisky  thinks  whisky.  He  who  drinks 
Scotch  whisky  becomes  as  the  Scotch  people, 
who,  as  all  men  know,  are  a  hectoring,  swag- 
29 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

gering,  dull-witted,  bandy-legged,  plantigrade 
folk.  He  who  drinks  Irish  whisky  becomes 
as  the  Irish,  who  should  be  nimble,  and  neat, 
and  vivacious,  and  thriftless,  and  careless,  and 
lavish,  and  decent,  and  otherwise  gracious. 
The  wise  man,  of  course,  will  let  both  vari- 
eties pass  by  him,  excepting  that  he  take  them 
in  thimblefuls,  and  then  only  in  the  shape  of 
nightcaps.  And  lest  the  United  Kingdom 
Alliance  misconstrue  what  I  have  now  said, 
let  me  here  say  roundly  and  flatly  and  out  of 
a  good  heart — A  plague  on  both  your  whis- 
kies !  The  Scotch,  it  is  true,  is  better  to  your 
taste;  but  the  Irish  has  the  merit  of  being 
better  to  your  ethical  or  nobler  parts.  The 
effect  of  Irish  whisky  upon  Ireland  is  a  mat- 
ter that  might  fittingly  form  the  subject  of 
six  or  eight  stout  volumes,  bound  in  calf  and 
prefaced  by  a  life  of  Father  Mathew.  The 
appealing  and  startling  beauty  of  Irish  whisky 
as  a  potable  spirit  appears  to  lie  in  the  fact 
that  it  has  never  done  Ireland  any  harm. 
The  number  of  whisky-sodden  persons  in 

30 


WHISKY 

Scotland  and  the  number  of  whisky-sodden 
persons  in  Ireland  stand  in  the  ratio  of  ten 
to  one.  In  Scotland  the  red  nose  and  the 
pimply  face  abound.  Outside  that  fearsome 
area  known  as  the  Diamond,  there  is  scarcely 
a  red  nose  or  a  pimply  face  in  all  Ireland. 
All  the  best  Scotch  whisky  is  produced  in  le- 
gitimate distilleries,  and  all  the  best  Irish 
whisky,  with  due  respect,  of  course,  to  Dun- 
ville,  Jamieson  et  hoc  genus,  comes  out  of 
little  places  which  are  unbeknownst  to  the 
King's  officers  of  Excise.  This,  however,  is 
merely  extraordinary,  paradoxical,  and  inex- 
plicable, and  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
ethnology.  But  to  return  to  the  point :  whis- 
ky in  Scotland  is  a  religion,  an  institution,  a 
tradition,  and  a  national  reproach.  Whisky 
in  Ireland,  on  the  other  hand,  is  an  accom- 
plishment, an  ornament,  a  mellowness,  a  kind- 
ness, a  simplicity,  and  a  joy  forever.  The  true 
Irish  people  drink  it  wisely  as  the  Gaul  takes 
his  wine.  When  you  see  a  number  of  drunken 
persons  in  Ireland,  you  may  safely  assume 
31 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

that  they  are  Orangemen  and  of  Scotch  de- 
scent. The  Irish  of  Ireland  do  not  get  drunk; 
which  means  that  they  neither  roister  in  bars 
nor  soak  alcoholically  at  home.  According 
to  Mr.  Hussey,  Irish  whisky  is  "  vilely  adul- 
terated," both  by  the  publican  and  "  in  some 
of  the  factories."  In  support  of  this  state- 
ment he  tells  the  following  story:  "  On  one 
occasion  a  Killorglin  publican  was  in  jail,  and 
his  father  asked  for  an  interview  because  he 
wanted  the  recipe  for  manufacturing  the  spe- 
cial whisky  for  Puck  Fair.  It  has  been  a  con- 
stant practise  to  prepare  this  blend,  but  the 
whisky  does  not  keep  many  days,  as  may  be 
gathered  from  the  recipe,  which  the  prisoner 
without  hesitation  dictated  to  his  parent :  '  A 
gallon  of  fresh,  fiery  whisky,  a  pint  of  rum, 
a  pint  of  methylated  spirit,  two  ounces  of 
corrosive  sublimate,  and  three  gallons  of  wa- 
ter.' '  Which  is  to  suggest  that  the  Irish  have 
no  palates,  and  that  like  the  gentleman  who 
ate  fly-papers  in  mistake  for  oatcake,  they  are 
poison-proof.  Frankly,  I  should  be  disposed 

32 


WHISKY 

to  take  Mr.  Hussey's  recipe  with  great  re- 
serve. It  is  amusing,  doubtless,  but  a  chemist 
would  shake  his  head  over  it.  Practically, 
the  only  undesirable  drinking  which  goes  on 
in  Ireland  proper  is  done  at  wakes;  but  even 
Mr.  Hussey  admits  that  wakes  are  on  the 
decline,  and  not  by  any  means  the  occasions 
for  over-indulgence  which  they  once  were. 
It  is  all  very  well  to  visit  a  country  town  and 
single  out  half  a  dozen  notorious  drunkards 
with  the  view  of  proving  that  the  Irish  peo- 
ple are  a  drunken  people.  I  say  that  the  Irish 
people  in  the  lump  are  a  sober  people,  though 
they  may  not  be  teetotalers.  I  will  go  fur- 
ther and  admit  that  they  have  a  wonderful 
appreciation  for  the  wine  of  the  country,  and 
that  at  times  some  of  them  even  get  hearty. 
But  this  is  not  to  say  that  drink  rages  in  Ire- 
land as  it  rages  in  Scotland,  or,  for  that  mat- 
ter, as  it  rages  in  the  poorer  quarters  of  our 
English  cities.  And  I  believe  further  that, 
taking  the  whisky  of  Ireland  all  round,  it  is 
a  much  sounder  and  less  sophisticated  spirit 

33 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

than  the  bulk  of  the  whisky  consumed  in 
Scotland  and  England.  Mr.  Hussey  assures 
us  that  the  increase  of  lunacy  in  Ireland  has 
been  pronounced  by  the  Committee  which  sat 
on  the  question  in  Dublin  to  be  mainly  due, 
not  only  to  excessive  drinking,  but  to  the  as- 
similation of  adulterated  spirits.  With  all 
respect  to  the  conclusions  of  this  Commit- 
tee, I  do  not  think  that  those  conclusions 
are  borne  out  by  the  facts.  Lunacy  in  Ire- 
land is  the  direct  outcome  of  the  almost 
unthinkable  poverty  and  squalor  of  the  great- 
er part  of  the  population.  When  you  couple 
with  poverty,  want  of  occupation,  a  solitary 
life,  and  an  enervating  climate,  not  to  men- 
tion the  melancholy  brooding  propensities  of 
the  Irish  peasant,  it  is  no  wonder  that  lunacy 
claims  many  victims.  To  allege  that  because 
a  lunatic  has  been  in  the  habit  of  consuming 
a  considerable  quantity  of  poteen  his  lunacy 
is  necessarily  due  to  poteen,  seems  to  me  to 
be  begging  the  question.  If  you  could  alle- 
viate the  poverty  and  inaction  to  which  the 
34 


WHISKY 

Irish  peasant  is  condemned  from  the  day  of 
his  birth  to  the  day  of  his  death,  you  would 
have  gone  a  long  way  toward  eliminating 
lunacy  from  Ireland,  and  at  the  same  time 
I  believe  you  would  find  that  you  had  not 
seriously  reduced  the  consumption  of  whisky, 
the  fact  being  that  the  consumption  per  head 
of  the  population  is  reasonable.  In  this,  as 
in  many  other  respects,  Ireland  has  been 
grossly  misrepresented,  both  by  serious  and 
humorous  writers.  The  humorous  writers, 
indeed,  have  been  the  graver  offenders. 
Many  of  them  seem  incapable  of  conceiving 
the  Irish  character  in  any  terms  but  those  of 
hilarious  and  flagrant  alcoholism.  It  is  a 
profound  mistake,  and  we  shall  be  helped 
materially  in  our  endeavors  to  comprehend 
and  placate  our  unfortunate  sister  kingdom, 
if  we  dismiss  forthwith  from  our  minds  the 
idea  that  she  is  utterly  and  perceptibly  given 
over  to  inordinate  drinking. 


35 


CHAPTER    V 

THE   PATHRIOT 

IRELAND  has  produced  more  patriots  than 
any  other  country  under  the  sun.  The  names 
of  them  are  legion,  and  from  Wolfe  Tone 
down  to  Dr.  Tanner  they  have  all  been  men 
of  reasonable  parts.  O'Connell,  Emmet, 
Butt,  and  Parnell  shine  out  perhaps  as  the 
greatest  of  them.  The  smaller  fry  do  not 
require  enumeration.  But  if  I  mistake  not, 
while  it  is  the  fashion  to  flatter  every  Irish- 
man who  has  done  anything  at  all  for  Ire- 
land with  the  general  title  of  pathriot,  it  is 
only  within  comparatively  recent  times  that 
the  authentic  pathriot  has  come  into  being. 
The  fact  that  in  England  people  are  unkind 
enough  to  call  him  an  agitator  is  of  small  con- 
sequence. The  pathriot  is  singularly  and  pe- 
culiarly Irish.  There  is  nothing  like  him  in 
England,  and  there  never  will  be  anything 

36 


THE    PATHRIOT 

like  him;  for  he  comes  like  water  and  like 
wind  he  goes.  He  begins  anywhere — he  may 
be  a  butcher,  a  publican,  a  schoolmaster  or  a 
farmer — he  attains  a  seat  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  a  certain  prominence  in  the 
press,  and  he  ends  nowhere.  Irish  editors 
worship  him  for  a  season,  then  they  wax  crit- 
ical of  him,  then  they  forget  him  altogether. 
Mr.  Timothy  Healy  is  a  good  type  of  the 
pathriot  at  his  best.  He  has  accomplished 
great  things  for  Ireland,  and  achieved  for 
himself  a  reputation  in  Parliament  for  a  sort 
of  savage  brilliance.  But  there  are  not  a 
dozen  men  in  England,  Ireland,  Scotland  or 
Wales  to-day  who  care  twopence  where  he  is, 
or  could  tell  you  what  becomes  of  him  when 
Parliament  is  not  sitting.  He  will  end  ob- 
scurely, inasmuch  as  it  is  the  fate  of  Irish 
pathriots  so  to  end.  As  the  chief  of  the 
pathriots  of  the  less  glorious  type,  who  how- 
ever succeed  in  making  the  best  of  both  coun- 
tries, we  may  instance  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor. 
Mr.  O'Connor  is  an  Irishman  and  a  Nation- 

37 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

alist,  but  he  has  shaken  the  dust  of  Ireland 
from  his  feet,  and  he  sits  for  the  Scotland 
division  of  Liverpool,  and  has  done  himself 
rather  well  as  a  promoter  of  heterogeneous 
newspapers  in  London.  With  Mr.  O'Con- 
nor, however,  we  shall  deal  fully  elsewhere. 
Only  for  the  sake  of  symmetry,  do  not  let  us 
forget  that  he  is  a  pathriot  of  the  finest  water. 
The  vital  defect  in  the  character  of  the  Irish 
pathriot,  looking  at  him  squarely,  is  that  in 
recent  times  at  any  rate  he  has  never  been  a 
statesman.  A  pathriot  with  the  proper  states- 
manlike qualities  might,  it  is  true,  have  been 
altogether  swamped  by  the  frothy  eloquence 
and  wild  demands  of  the  main  body  of  path- 
riots.  But  such  a  one,  if  the  Irish  could  only 
have  managed  to  find  him  and  keep  him 
going,  whether  in  the  House  of  Commons 
or  on  English  platforms,  would  in  the  long 
run  have  made  a  vast  difference  to  her  inter- 
ests. It  may  be  argued  that  Ireland  did  actu- 
ally find  a  statesman  in  Mr.  Gladstone.  On 
the  other  hand  it  is  abundantly  evident  that 

38 


THE    PATHRIOT 

however  sincere  and  admirable  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's proposals  for  the  betterment  of  the 
country  may  have  been,  they  were  not  based 
on  anything  like  an  exact,  or  for  that  matter 
even  a  working,  knowledge  of  its  necessities 
and  requirements.  As  for  Mr.  Parnell,  it  is 
no  disrespect  to  him  to  say  of  him,  in  full 
view  of  his  amazing  career,  that  he  was  not  a 
statesman  even  in  a  small  way.  His  aloof- 
ness, haughtiness  and  chilliness  of  temper 
precluded  him  from  a  really  effective  part  or 
lot  in  the  faction  which  he  led,  and  ruled  with 
a  rod  of  iron,  and,  for  himself,  he  had  not 
sufficient  spirits  and  imagination  to  carve  out 
an  independent  and  statesmanlike  policy. 
Mr.  Parnell  made  a  great  name  and  no  little 
dust  in  the  world,  yet  the  verdict  of  history 
upon  him  will  be  that  he  was  neither  an 
O'Connell  nor  an  Isaac  Butt,  and  that  he 
failed  to  go  anything  like  so  far  as  might 
have  been  expected  of  him.  For  the  rest  of 
the  pathriots,  the  remnant,  as  it  were,  of  the 
National  party,  they  do  not  matter,  and  they 

39 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

know  it.  In  the  House  of  Commons  they  are 
absolutely  without  other  than  adventitious 
power.  The  English  party  system  happened 
to  afford  them  certain  mechanical  advantages 
of  which  they  are  never  tired  of  boasting. 
Their  sarcasms  and  humors  and  occasional 
displays  of  temper  bring  them  from  time  to 
time  a  passing  notoriety.  But  taking  them  as 
a  body  they  are  inept,  irresponsible,  feeble  and 
negligible;  constituting,  indeed,  a  standing 
monument  to  the  undesirable  vagaries  which 
might  be  looked  for  in  the  event  of  their  being 
granted  that  much  desired  "  little  place  of 
their  own  "  on  College  Green.  In  fine,  the 
Irish  pathriot  of  our  own  times  will  not  wash. 
He  means  well  by  his  country,  and  well 
enough  by  himself,  but  he  has  no  balance, 
and  is  entirely  blind  to  the  falsehood  of  ex- 
tremes. It  is  curious  to  note  how  easily  Ire- 
land is  satisfied.  In  pretty  well  all  matters 
that  concern  her  closely  her  standard  of  re- 
quirement is  barely  middling.  She  knows 
how  to  be  grateful  to  the  merest  nonentities, 
40 


THE    PATHRIOT 

and  she  can  bestow  reverence  and  undying 
fame  upon  persons  who  are  little  removed 
from  mediocrity.  The  modern  pathriot  has 
never  risen  above  the  foot-hills;  yet  for  Ire- 
land he  stands  upon  the  pinnacle,  and  they 
say  Hosanna  to  him.  It  is  a  sign  of  the  times, 
however,  that  Erin  is  beginning  to  be  alive 
to  the  fact  that  in  the  main  the  pathriot  is 
just  one  of  those  persons  with  whom  she  can 
very  well  afford  to  dispense.  Vaulting  ambi- 
tion hath  rather  overleaped  itself  in  the  mat- 
ter of  these  gentry,  and  their  posturings  and 
screamings  and  clenchings  of  the  fist  are  no 
longer  received  with  altogether  unanimous 
applause.  That  there  is  reason  in  all  things 
is  a  simple  lesson  which  pathriots  who  are 
not  wholly  careless  of  their  future  will  do 
well  to  learn.  Their  well-worn  parrot-cries 
of  "  tyranny,"  "  oppression,"  "  cowardice," 
"  robbery,"  "  murder,"  and  so  forth  are  be- 
come just  a  trifle  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable. 
Irishmen  are  weary  of  shrieks;  they  desire 
a  trifle  of  sobriety  and  good  sense. 
4  41 


CHAPTER   VI 

ORANGEMEN 

IN  matters  Irish  it  is  quite  usual  to  talk 
of  aiming  at  the  manifestly  impossible.  If 
we  could  get  rid  of  the  priests,  say  some,  Ire- 
land would  be  a  happy  country;  but  nobody 
suggests  how  it  is  to  be  done,  because  every- 
body knows  full  well  that  it  cannot  be  done. 
And  nobody  pretends  to  be  quite  sure  that 
benefits  would  result  if  it  were  done.  For 
myself,  I  believe  that  one  of  the  most  salu- 
tary things  that  could  be  done  for  Ireland  at 
the  present  moment  would  be  to  get  rid  of 
the  Orangemen.  Though  they  are,  of  course, 
a  much  older  organization,  they  occupy  in 
Ireland  pretty  much  the  same  position  as  the 
Passive  Resisters  occupy  in  this  country.  In 
other  words,  while  they  proclaim  themselves 
to  be  the  friends  of  liberty,  they  are  in  reality 
42 


ORANGEMEN 

nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  friends  of  in- 
tolerance and  tyranny. 

"  A  Grand  Orange  demonstration  will  be 
held  in  Donegal  on  Tuesday,  I2th  July  1898. 
Who  fears  to  speak  of  Derry,  Aughrim,  and 
the  Boyne?  Papists,  stand  aside!  We  con- 
quered you  before,  and  can  do  so  again.  Our 
motto  still  is:  Down  with  Home  Rule,  Hur- 
rah for  King  William,  and  to  Hell  with  the 
Pope!" 

This  is  a  sample  Orange  proclamation 
quoted  by  Mr.  M.  J.  F.  M'Carthy  in  Five 
Years  in  Ireland.  Now  seventy-five  per  cent, 
of  the  population  of  Ireland  are  Roman 
Catholics;  what  is  more,  they  are  Roman 
Catholics  of  the  devoutest  and  most  devoted 
type.  Probably  the  Orangemen  do  not  num- 
ber ten  per  cent,  of  the  population;  yet  they 
are  allowed  to  insult  the  Head  of  the  Roman 
Church  in  the  grossest  manner,  with  absolute 
impunity.  If  any  secret  society  or  other  body 
in  Ireland  were  to  post  a  notice  in  Donegal 

43 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

to-morrow  announcing  a  grand  national  dem- 
onstration, and  winding  up  with  some  such 
ejaculatory  remark  as  "  To  Hell  with  Mr. 
Balfour,"  there  would  be  arrests  and  terms 
of  imprisonment  and  howls  from  every  cor- 
ner of  England.  It  goes  without  saying  that 
the  Pope  is  not  Mr.  Balfour,  and  when  His 
Holiness  is  wished  "  to  Hell "  nobody  is 
really  a  penny  the  worse.  But  can  it  be 
claimed  for  a  moment  that  there  is  either 
justice  or  reason  in  allowing  such  insults  to 
be  placarded  in  the  midst  of  a  Catholic  popu- 
lation? Nobody  above  the  level  of  a  Scotch 
Presbyterian  would  attempt  to  justify  any- 
thing of  the  kind.  It  may  be  that  when  the 
Orange  lodges  were  founded  they  had  a  use 
and  were  necessary  for  the  protection  of  the 
Protestant  religion  against  the  wiles  of  Roman 
Catholicism.  At  the  present  moment  they 
serve  no  purpose  whatever  that  is  not  essen- 
tially evil.  In  point  of  fact  they  are  organ- 
ized centers  for  the  encouragement  of  bibu- 
lous sentiment  and  the  open  flaunting  of  the 
44 


ORANGEMEN 

power  of  an  ill-conditioned  minority  over  a 
decent  and  fairly  tolerant  majority.  The 
Protestant  religion  in  Ireland  must  be  in  a 
distinctly  parlous  condition  if  it  requires  any 
such  backing  or  any  such  "  protection."  The 
fact  is  that  nothing  of  the  sort  is  necessary, 
or  believed  to  be  necessary,  even  by  the  more 
bigoted  Irish  Protestants.  That  being  so, 
Orangeism  would  seem  to  be  ripe  for  extirpa- 
tion. If  the  English  Government  were  as 
secular  as  it  is  commonly  held  to  be,  the  Or- 
ange lodges  would  have  short  shrift.  It  is 
their  supposed  connection  with  religious  lib- 
erty which  shields  them  from  suppression. 
Yet  every  Irishman,  Protestant  or  Catholic, 
knows  well  that  the  religious  element  in  Or- 
angeism is  little  more  than  pure  farce.  The 
entire  Orange  forces  of  Ireland  could  not 
muster  a  couple  of  saints,  lay  or  clerical,  to 
save  their  lives.  At  the  present  time  the  Or- 
ange faction  is  literally  powerless  to  do  any- 
thing but  create  disturbances  which  are,  in 
effect,  street  rows  of  the  most  vulgar  and  ill- 

45 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

considered  nature.  The  stoning  of  Cardinals 
belongs  properly  to  the  same  order  of  sport 
as  the  baiting  of  Jews.  Neither  pastime 
would  be  tolerated  for  a  moment  in  Eng- 
land. 

Why  the  Northern  Irish  should  be  indulged 
passes  comprehension.  The  majority  in  Ire- 
land is  Green  and  Catholic  as  opposed  to  a 
tiny  minority  of  Orange  and  Protestant.  The 
majority  has  an  admitted  right  to  its  way  in 
England — why  not  in  Ireland?  Much  has 
been  said  as  to  the  "  sinfulness  "  and  "  wick- 
edness "  of  Mr.  Gladstone  in  disestablishing 
the  Irish  Church.  I  am  not  sure  that  even 
the  Catholics  are  quite  convinced  that  Mr. 
Gladstone's  action  was  wise.  But  one  thing 
is  certain,  namely,  that  the  disestablishment 
of  the  Irish  Church  was  eminently  just,  hav- 
ing regard  to  the  relative  position  of  religious 
parties  in  the  country.  The  suppression  of 
the  Orange  lodges,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  penal- 
ization of  Orange  demonstrations,  ought  to 
have  followed  as  a  matter  of  course.  There 
46 


ORANGEMEN 

will  never  be  real  peace  nor  content  in  Ire- 
land till  Orangeism  is  deprived  of  its  present 
scandalous  powers  of  annoyance,  disturbance 
and  tyranny.  Toleration  on  both  sides,  Cath- 
olic and  Protestant,  is  the  only  hope  for  a 
"  United  Ireland,"  or  for  an  Ireland  that  is 
to  work  out  its  own  social  and  political  salva- 
tion. And  you  cannot  have  tolerance  where 
you  have  an  organization  of  chartered  reac- 
tionaries who,  in  spite  of  their  alleged  relig- 
ious purpose,  are  little  removed,  whether  in 
temper  or  intention,  from  the  common  Hooli- 
gans of  London.  The  Irish  Catholic  Church, 
which,  after  all,  possesses  some  say  over  its 
adherents,  has,  during  late  years,  done  all 
that  lies  in  its  power  to  prevent  collisions  be- 
tween Catholics  and  Orangemen ;  it  avoids  as 
far  as  is  possible  the  occasions  of  such  col- 
lision; it  is  careful  neither  to  provoke  nor 
challenge,  and  in  practise  it  literally  "  turns 
the  other  cheek."  The  Irish  Protestant 
Church  is  equally  anxious  for  peace  and 
equally  assiduous  in  its  efforts  to  secure  it. 

47 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

Yet  Orangeism  flaunts  itself  at  large  and 
without  let  or  hindrance.  It  furnishes  forth 
"  riots  o'  Monday  "  at  its  own  sweet  will, 
and  hoots,  and  mobs,  and  waves  crimson 
handkerchiefs,  and  throws  stones,  and  breaks 
windows  and  heads  to  its  heart's  content. 
There  is  really  nobody  to  say  it  nay.  Au- 
thority stands  by  and  winks,  for  is  it  not  the 
great  principle  of  Protestantism  that  is  being 
protected?  And  are  not  these  same  Orange- 
men vigorous  and  violent  anti-Home-Rulers? 
Herein,  indeed,  you  have  the  true  inwardness 
of  the  modern  English  attitude  toward  King 
William's  men.  The  domestic  quietude  of 
Ireland  and  the  religious  freedom  of  two- 
thirds  of  her  population  cannot  be  of  the 
remotest  consequence  compared  with  the 
maintenance  of  the  Union.  That  Ireland  no 
longer  seeks  Home  Rule  does  not  matter. 
Orangeism  has  severed  the  Unionists  passing 
well  in  the  day  that  is  just  past.  Let  it  reap 
its  reward  in  the  shape  of  leave  and  license. 
It  deserves  well  of  England;  who  shall  raise 
48 


ORANGEMEN 

a  finger  against  it?  And,  moreover,  it  is 
Scotch,  and  the  Scotch  are  the  backbone  of 
Ireland,  as  of  England — manners  and  morals 
and  all  other  decent  things  on  one  side.  As 
I  indicated  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter, 
to  attempt  to  rid  Ireland  of  Orangemen  were 
to  attempt  the  impossible.  But  to  deprive 
Orangeism  of  English  approval  and  counte- 
nance is  possible.  Break  up  the  lodges,  bring 
to  bear  on  the  suppression  of  Orange  demon- 
strations and  Orange  disturbances  one  tithe 
of  the  forces  you  brought  to  bear  against 
Irish  nationalism,  and  you  will  have  gone  a 
great  way  toward  removing  the  last  obstacles 
to  the  peace  and  contentment  of  the  Irish 
people  as  a  body. 


49 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    LOW   SCOTCH 

I  HAVE  no  desire  to  offer  in  the  present 
pages  a  re-hash  of  a  former  work  of  mine, 
which  is  said  to  have  provoked  the  Scotch  to 
the  point  of  laughter.  But  I  do  desire  to 
assert  that,  in  my  humble  opinion,  it  is  the 
Scotch,  or  alien  population  of  Ireland,  which 
has  been  at  the  root  of  Ireland's  principal 
troubles  throughout  the  past  century.  Ulster 
may  be  a  fine  kingdom,  the  wealthiest,  most 
industrious,  and  the  wisest  and  happiest  in 
the  country,  if  you  like.  Yet  it  is  Ulster  that 
bars  the  way  in  all  matters  that  make  for 
the  real  good  of  Ireland.  Every  proper 
Irishman  knows  this,  and  Ulstermen  will  be 
at  no  pains  to  deny  it.  Rather  are  they 
disposed  to  glory  in  it  and  to  brag  about 
it.  Ireland,  they  will  tell  you,  is  their 
50 


THE    LOW    SCOTCH 

country.  It  is  they  who  have  made  it,  they 
who  have  saved  it,  they  who  have  enriched, 
beautified  and  adorned  it.  They  point  to  the 
linen  industry  and  to  the  shipbuilding  indus- 
try; they  crack  about  Belfast  and  Portadown, 
and  about  "  eminent  Ulstermen  in  every  walk 
of  life."  There  would  be  no  Ireland  at  all 
if  it  were  not  for  themselves.  They  rule  Ire- 
land. What  Ireland  wants  she  may  have,  if 
it  pleases  Ulster.  What  Ireland  does  not 
want  she  must  have,  if  Ulster  so  much  as 
nod.  That,  at  any  rate,  is  the  view  of  Ulster, 
the  view  of  the  thrifty,  douce  Scotch  bodies 
whose  fathers  got  gifts  of  other  people's 
lands  from  James  I.  of  England  and  VI.  of 
Scotland,  and  whose  sons  go  up  and  down 
and  to  and  fro  upon  the  earth,  calling  them- 
selves "  Irishmen  of  Scotch  descent."  There 
are  no  Irishmen  of  Scotch  descent.  And 
Ulstermen  are  not  Irishmen  unless  their  de- 
scent be  Irish.  Failing  this,  they  are  simply 
interlopers,  or,  at  best,  colonists  and  planta- 
tion men,  and  they  had  best  put  the  fact 

51 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

in  their  pipes  and  smoke  it.  Nobody  can 
deny  that  it  was  a  bad  day  for  Ireland  when 
they  came  grabbing  and  grubbing  to  her 
shores,  just  as  it  was  a  bad  day  for  Eng- 
land when  she  "  took  up  "  with  them.  They 
got  Ulster  for  nothing,  and  they  have  kept 
it  for  "  that  same."  They  have  lived  and 
waxed  fat  on  Irish  plunder,  and  the  whole 
force  of  English  legislation  has  been  directed 
toward  maintaining  them  in  their  place,  fos- 
tering their  projects,  pampering  and  propiti- 
ating them,  and  "  protecting  "  them  against 
the  wicked,  degraded,  unreasonable  Irish 
outside.  Nor  have  they  been  content  to  con- 
fine their  greedy  attention  to  their  own 
proper  "  kingdom,"  which  is  not  theirs. 
Where  the  carcass  is,  there  will  the  vulture 
be;  and  where  there  is  a  soft  job,  or  obvious 
pickings,  there  you  will  find  a  Scotchman. 
So  that  throughout  Ireland,  Scotchmen  have 
been  scattered  wherever  the  Government 
could  find  a  place  for  one.  There  is  scarcely 
an  office,  sub-office,  or  sub-deputy  office  worth 

52 


THE    LOW    SCOTCH 

the  having  in  all  Ireland  which  has  not  been 
made  the  perquisite  of  a  Protestant  Scotch- 
man. Even  the  Congested  Districts  Board 
employs  Scotch  factors,  and  Thorn's  Almanac 
is  little  more  than  a  catalogue  of  Scotch 
patronymics.  And  the  pride  and  insolence 
and  unfairness  of  them!  From  a  booklet 
called  The  Scot  in  Ulster,  written  by  a  Scotch- 
man, and  published,  if  you  please,  by  Black- 
wood's  of  Edinburgh,  I  take  the  following: 
"  Their  English  and  Scotch  origin  seems  to 
me  to  give  to  the  men  of  Ulster  an  unalien- 
able  right  to  protest,  as  far  as  they  are  con- 
cerned, against  the  policy  of  separation  from 
Great  Britain  to  which  the  Irish,  with  the 
genius  for  nicknames  which  they  possess,  at 
present  give  the  name  of  Home  Rule." 
Could  sophistry,  craft,  subtlety,  disingenuous- 
ness,  or  the  Scotch  genius  for  cunning  misrep- 
resentation go  further  ?  To  say  that  when  the 
Irish  people  have  said  Home  Rule  they  meant 
separation,  is  to  promulgate  a  deliberate  and 
wily  untruth.  The  Irish  people  proper  in- 

53 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

variably  mean  what  they  say,  no  more  and  no 
less.  Home  Rule  never  meant  more  nor 
less  to  the  Irish  than  "  a  parliament  on  col- 
lege green."  It  was  the  Scotch,  and  the 
Scotch  alone,  who  set  up  the  cry  of  "  separa- 
tion "  for  a  bugbear  and  a  bogy  wherewith 
to  frighten  the  timorous  English  ruler  into 
stubborn  acquiescence  in  the  Scotch  view  of 
Irish  affairs.  Yet  here  we  have  a  Scotchman 
assuring  us  in  cold  print  that  Home  Rule  is 
merely  an  Irish  "  nickname  "  for  "  separa- 
tion." I  note  with  considerable  satisfaction, 
however,  that,  as  Scotchmen  will,  the  author 
of  The  Scot  in  Ulster  proceeds  religiously  to 
give  away  the  whole  Scotch-Irish  question. 
"  For  centuries,"  says  he,  "  the  Scot  had  been 
wont  to  wander  forth  over  Europe  in  search 
of  adventure.  [The  italic  is  ours.]  As  a 
rule,  he  turned  his  steps  where  fighting  was 
to  be  had,  and  the  pay  for  killing  was  reason- 
ably good.  [Again  the  italics  are  ours.] 
.  .  .  These  Scots  who  have  flocked  from 
Leith,  or  Crail,  or  Berwick  to  seek  fortune, 

54 


THE    LOW    SCOTCH 

in  peace  or  war,  on  the  Continent  of  Europe 
were  mostly  the  young  and  adventurous,  for 
whom  the  old  home  life  had  become  too  nar- 
row. They  took  with  them  little  save  their 
own  stout  hearts  and  their  national  long 
heads.  [These,  too,  are  our  italics.] 
The  time  arrived  at  last,  however,  when  war 
with  England  ceased,  and  internal  strife  be- 
came less  bloody,  and  Scotland  began  to  be 
too  small  for  her  rapidly  growing  population, 
for  in  those  days  food  did  not  necessarily 
come  where  there  were  mouths  to  consume  it. 
[Italics — of  our  own — which  famine-stricken 
Ireland  may  fittingly  ponder.]  Then  the 
Scots,  true  to  the  race  from  which  they  sprung 
— for  '  Norman,  and  Saxon,  and  Dane  are 
we  '  [think  of  it! J] — began  to  go  forth,  like 
the  northern  hordes  in  days  of  yore,  the 
women  and  the  children  along  with  the 
bread-winners,  and  crossed  the  seas,  and  set- 
tled in  new  lands,  and  were  c  fruitful  and 

1  In  point    of  fact   the   Scotch   are   neither    Norman, 
Saxon,  Dane  nor  good  red-herring,  but  sheer  Scotch. 

55 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

multiplied  and  replenished  the  earth,'  until 
the  globe  is  circled  round  with  colonies  which 
are  of  our  blood,  and  which  love  and  cherish 
the  old  *  land  of  the  mountain  and  the 
flood.''  [Tut,  tut!]  And  now  mark  us: 
"  It  was  in  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century  that  the  first  of  these  swarms  crossed 
the  narrowest  of  the  seas  which  surround 
Scotland;  it  went  out  from  the  Ayrshire  and 
Galloway  ports,  and  settled  in  the  north  of 
Ireland.  The  numbers  which  went  were 
large.  They  left  Scotland  at  a  time  when 
she  was  deeply  moved  by  the  great  Puri- 
tan revival.  They  took  with  them  their 
Scottish  character  and  their  Scottish  Calvin- 
ism. [Clearly  they  had  both  hands  full!] 
They  founded  the  Scottish  colony  in  Ulster. 
Thus  it  comes  to  pass  '  That  the  foundation 
of  Ulster  society  is  Scottish.  It  is  the  solid 
granite  on  which  it  rests.'  [Glory  be !]  The 
history  of  this  Scottish  colony  seems  worth 
telling,  for  it  is  a  story  of  which  any  Scots- 
man at  home  or  abroad  may  be  proud. 

56 


THE    LOW    SCOTCH 

[Where  is  my  crimson  handkerchief?]  Its 
early  history  is  quaint  and  interesting  [our 
italics]  ;  there  is  much  suffering  and  oppression 
in  the  story  of  the  succeeding  years  [our  ital- 
ics] ;  but  there  are  flashes  of  brightness  to  re- 
lieve the  gloom.  The  men  which  this  race  of 
Scotsmen  has  produced  are  worthy  of  the  par- 
ent stock;  the  contribution  which  this  branch 
of  the  Scottish  nation  has  made  to  the  prog- 
ress of  civilization  proves  that  it  has  not  for- 
gotten the  old  ideals;  the  portion  of  Ireland 
which  these  Scotsmen  HOLD  is  so  prosper- 
ous and  contented  that  it  permits  our  states- 
men to  forget  that  it  is  part  of  that  most 
'  distressful '  country."  I  venture  to  thank 
Heaven  and  St.  Patrick  that  the  statements 
we  have  last  italicized  and  the  word  we  have 
put  in  capital  letters  embody  the  truth,  the 
whole  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth.  Ex- 
amine them,  O  sons  of  Erin,  and  take  heed 
that  You  are  the  people,  and  that  the  Scotch 
are  but  the  sons  of  Belial  and  Astoreth. 
What  has  holy  Ireland  to  do  with  these  va- 
5  57 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

pors,  these  swaggerings,  these  smitings  of 
righteous  breasts?  Who  be  the  grubby, 
grimy,  gallowayan,  grasping,  governmental 
hucksters  that  so  by  implication  and  innu- 
endo contemn  You,  the  proper  and  legitimate 
owners  of  Ulster?  Ask  of  the  winds,  which 
far  around  strew  Scotchmen  and  the  devil  on 
the  fair  places  of  the  earth.  You  are  innocent 
to  put  up  with  it.  You  fought  the  landlords 
and  beat  them  hollow.  "  We  conquered  you 
before,  and  can  do  so  again !  "  Be  done  with 
this  Scotch  obsession.  Good  can  come  out  of 
Ireland  and  Irishmen,  as  well  as  out  of  Ulster 
and  Scotchmen.  Lo,  that  green  island  is 
yours,  not  theirs.  Seven-tenths  of  it  are  in 
your  hands  to  do  with  as  you  will.  "  There 
is  not,  perhaps,  another  country  on  the  face 
of  the  globe  where  more  good,  solid  work  is 
waiting  to  be  done,  where  greater  capacities 
lie  dormant,  yet  where  trifling  of  all  kinds  so 
abounds."  That  is  the  verdict  of  an  Irish- 
man and  an  Irish  Catholic  upon  you.  In 
sober  truth  you  groan,  as  England  groans, 
58 


THE    LOW    SCOTCH 

under  the  Scotch  superstition.  Nobody  can 
be  prosperous  in  Ireland  save  Scotchmen. 
Nobody  can  manufacture  but  Scotchmen,  no- 
body can  farm  but  Scotchmen.  The  view  is 
entirely  false.  Encourage  it  no  longer;  re- 
member who  you  are,  and  make  an  end  of 
trifling. 


59 


CHAPTER   VIII 

PRIESTCRAFT 

ARE  there  too  many  priests  in  Ireland? 
Yes.  Is  Dublin  "  black  with  them  "?  Yes. 
Do  they  appear  to  be  as  frequent  on  the 
country  side  as  crows?  Yes.  Are  they  ex- 
torting from  the  Irish  people  money  which 
is  sorely  needed  for  secular  purposes?  Yes. 
Here  you  have  four  pertinent  questions,  which 
invariably  crop  up  whenever  Ireland  is  dis- 
cussed, together  with  the  average  answers  to 
them.  "  It  is  the  priests !  "  cry  both  well  and 
ill  informed.  According  to  the  latest  critic 
— who,  it  seems,  once  occupied  the  somewhat 
superfluous  position  of  "  literary  editor  of  the 
Daily  Mail " — "  one  of  the  heaviest  drags 
upon  the  life  of  Ireland  is  the  religious  voca- 
tion. The  monasteries  and  nunneries  prosper 
and  increase,  choking  and  interfering  with 
60 


PRIESTCRAFT 

the  circulation  of  labor  and  of  industry  in  the 
country."  Also,  "  it  is  my  profound  con- 
viction that  a  large  proportion  of  the  present 
misery  of  Ireland  is  not  only  bound  up  with, 
but  is  actually  a  result  of  the  country's  re- 
ligion." Also,  "  the  houses  of  the  people  are 
so  indecently  poor  and  small;  the  houses  of 
the  Church  are  so  indecently  rich  and  large. 
Out  of  the  dirt  and  decay  they  rise,  proud 
and  ugly  and  substantial,  as  though  to  inform 
the  world  that  at  least  one  thing  is  not  dying 
and  despondent,  but  keeps  its  loins  girded 
and  its  lamps  trimmed."  This,  roughly,  is 
the  indictment.  Appended  are  some  of  the 
figures  upon  which  it  is  based.  Mr.  Michael 
M'Carthy,  himself  a  Catholic,  says,  "  A  car- 
dinal, 3  archbishops,  25  bishops,  2  mitred 
abbots,  and  2,722  secular  priests,  together 
with  a  host  of  regular  priests  of  all  the  dif- 
ferent Orders,  such  as  Jesuits,  Franciscans, 
Vincentians,  Holy  Ghost,  Carmelites,  Pas- 
sionists,  Augustinians,  Mary  Immaculate, 
Dominicans,  Cistercians,  Marists,  Redemp- 
61 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

torists  and  so  forth,  all  of  whom  flourish  in 
Ireland — such  is  the  force  which  constitutes 
the  formidable  clerical  army  of  the  Catholic 
Church  in  Ireland,  and  its  auxiliary  forces 
are  the  numerous  Orders  of  nuns,  Christian 
brothers,  lay  brothers  attached  to  the  regular 
Orders,  and  so  forth;  together  with  the  great 
body  of  Catholic  National  teachers,  male  and 
female,  who  are  under  the  control  of  the 
priests,  and  teach  catechism  in  the  churches; 
the  parish  priests,  as  managers  of  the  paro- 
chial National  Schools,  having  the  power  of 
dismissing  the  teachers."  "  May  it  not  be 
said  of  this  great  organization,"  adds  Mr. 
M'Carthy,  "  that  '  it  is  on  a  scale  such  as 
few  nations  would  be  able  and  willing  to 
afford'?" 

To  dispose  of  the  indictment  first,  we  may 
quote  a  little  further  from  the  author  of  it. 
He  writes :  "  So  far  as  they  are  individually 
concerned,  they  [the  priests]  are  in  many 
cases  the  true  friends  of  the  people.  They 
help  them  in  their  affairs,  settle  their  disputes, 
62 


PRIESTCRAFT 

claim  for  them  their  rights,  comfort  them  in 
their  sorrows,  admonish,  encourage,  cherish 
and  watch  over  them.  This  is  at  the  best. 
At  the  worst  they  are  hard  and  cruel,  selfish 
and  unjust,  over-eating  and  over-drinking — 
a  grotesque  and  monstrous  company.  But 
these  are  the  minority;  and  on  the  whole  the 
priests  perform  the  duties  of  a  dreary  life  as 
well  as  could  be  expected  of  a  narrow  and 
half-educated  class  of  men."  Now,  if  this 
means  anything  at  all  it  means  that  the  per- 
son responsible  for  it  believes  that  the  Catho- 
lic priesthood  of  Ireland  is  socially  useful 
and  necessary.  The  minority  of  its  members 
are  "  hard  and  cruel,  selfish  and  unjust," 
which  is  true  of  the  minority  in  other  priest- 
hoods besides  the  Irish.  But  the  majority 
"  are  the  true  friends  of  the  people,  helping 
them  in  their  affairs,  settling  their  disputes, 
claiming  for  them  their  rights,  comforting 
them  in  their  sorrows,  admonishing,  encour- 
aging, cherishing  and  watching  over  them." 
How  the  majority  manages  to  accomplish  so 
63 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

much,  if  it  is  composed  of  a  "  narrow  and 
half-educated  class  of  men,"  passes  compre- 
hension ;  but  we  have  the  fact  that  it  manages 
it,  which  is  satisfactory.  Further,  our  friend 
omits,  in  the  plenitude  of  his  deprecation,  to 
mention  that  the  "  religious  vocation "  in 
Ireland  is  by  no  means  the  softest,  easiest  and 
rosiest  of  vocations,  amounting,  indeed,  to  a 
species  of  spiritual  and  physical  servitude  of 
the  severest  kind;  and  that  the  religious 
Orders,  so  far  as  they  may  be  represented 
in  "  monasteries  and  nunneries,"  are  self- 
supporting,  subsisting  austerely  on  the  labor 
of  their  own  hands,  and  devoting  themselves 
to  the  most  arduous  charitable  and  educa- 
tional work  without  fee  or  reward.  And  as 
to  "  indecently  rich  "  houses  of  the  Church, 
such  an  epithet  as  applied  to  the  Catholic 
churches  of  Ireland  is  quite  preposterous. 
There  is  no  "  indecently  rich "  Catholic 
church  in  all  Ireland.  That  there  are  Prot- 
estant churches  with  incomes  amounting  to  a 
comfortable  number  of  hundreds  per  annum 
64 


PRIESTCRAFT 

and  not  half  a  dozen  souls  in  the  way  of  a 
bona-fide  congregation  may  be  granted;  but 
the  Catholic  church  with  as  little  as  £100  a 
year  and  no  congregation  does  not  exist. 
Neither  can  it  be  maintained  that  the  Irish 
Catholic  churches  are  "  indecently  rich  "  in 
the  matters  of  architecture  or  adornment — 
the  long-drawn  aisle  and  fretted  vault,  gor- 
geous windows,  splendid  altars  and  vessels, 
or  other  elaborate  fitments,  being  the  excep- 
tion and  not  the  rule.  Indeed,  our  author 
himself  complains  that  "  the  ugliness  of  the 
churches  in  Ireland  is  revolting  to  the  healthy 
sense,"  and  that  the  "  decorations "  which 
"  enshrine  the  mysteries  of  the  Mass  "  are 
"  cheap  "  and  "  hideous,"  so  that  on  his  own 
showing  "  indecently  rich  "  somehow  fails  to 
fit  in. 

Now  for  the  figures.  The  population  of 
Ireland  at  the  last  census  was,  roughly, 
4,500,000,  and  the  population  of  England 
and  Wales  32,500,000.  In  Ireland  there 
are  3  archbishops  and  25  bishops,  without 

65 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

reckoning  Episcopalians.  In  England  and 
Wales  there  are  2  archbishops,  33  bishops,  8 
assistant  bishops,  and  27  bishops  suffragan, 
without  reckoning  i  Roman  Catholic  arch- 
bishop and  15  bishops,  and  the  chiefs  of  the 
Wesleyan  Methodist,  Methodist  New  Con- 
nexion, Primitive  Methodist,  Baptist,  Con- 
gregational, Free  Church,  Salvation  Army, 
Church  Army,  Calvinistic,  Unitarian,  Catho- 
lic Apostolic,  and  a  host  of  other  bodies.  In 
the  matter  of  hierarchy,  therefore,  Ireland  is 
not  exactly  overburdened,  even  if  it  be  ad- 
mitted that  she  should  take  her  pattern  from 
England.  Then,  as  against  Ireland's  2,722 
secular  priests,  England  boasts  the  amazing 
total  of  23,000  beneficed  and  unbeneficed 
clergy,  plus  from  7,000  to  10,000  Noncon- 
formist ministers  and  20,000  Salvation  Army 
"  Officers."  So  that,  at  a  moderate  compu- 
tation, while  there  is  one  priest  or  minister 
of  religion  to  every  500  of  the  population 
in  England,  there  is  only  one  priest  to  every 
800  of  the  population  of  Ireland.  The 
66 


PRIESTCRAFT 

ratios  indicated  may  not  be  exact,  but  they 
are  based  on  Whitaker  and  pretty  near  the 
mark.  Taken  another  way  the  position 
amounts  to  this.  In  an  English  townlet  of 
from  3,000  to  4,000  population  you  will 
find,  as  a  rule,  a  couple  of  vicars,  three  or 
four  curates,  a  Wesleyan  minister,  a  Baptist 
minister,  a  Congregational  minister,  a  Cath- 
olic priest  and  a  couple  of  Salvationists.  In 
an  Irish  townlet  of  the  same  size  you  have 
possibly  six  Catholic  priests  and  a  solitary 
Episcopalian.  Dreadful,  is  it  not?  Being 
mainly  of  one  sort,  as  it  were,  the  priests 
of  Ireland  appear  to  be  much  thicker  on  the 
ground  than  the  clergy  and  ministers  of  Eng- 
land. But  it  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than 
an  optical  illusion — one  of  those  many  illu- 
sions upon  which  judgments  about  Ireland 
are  usually  formed.  As  to  places  of  worship, 
it  has  been  charged  against  the  Irish  Church 
that  she  builds  too  much.  "  The  traveler 
walking  or  driving  across  the  wastes  of 
that  empty  land,"  says  the  author  previously 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

quoted,  "  will  nearly  always  find  that  the 
first  thing  to  break  the  monotony  of  the  hori- 
zon is  a  spire  or  tower;  and  when  he  arrives 
at  the  desolate  little  huddle  of  cabins  or  cot- 
tages that  makes  a  town  he  will  find,  domi- 
nating and  shadowing  it,  the  Catholic  chapel. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  the  buildings  are  poor 
and  rough :  but  these  are  becoming  fewer  and 
fewer,  and  are  now  gradually,  even  in  the 
poorest  districts,  being  replaced  by  structures 
strangely  out  of  keeping  with  the  ruinous 
poverty  around  them.  The  last  few  years 
have  seen  in  Ireland  a  great  activity  in  the 
building  of  these  chapels;  the  very  slight  in- 
crease which  has  taken  place  in  the  standard 
of  living  has  made  the  movement  possible." 
Assuming  this  to  be  a  just  statement  of  the 
case,  is  it  not  equally  true  of  our  own  Eng- 
land? Has  not  the  building  of  churches, 
chapels  and  general  places  of  worship  pro- 
ceeded as  merrily  in  the  poorer  districts  of 
the  larger  English  towns  during  the  past  dec- 
ade as  ever  it  did  in  Ireland?  Where  can 
68 


PRIESTCRAFT 

you  turn  in  England  without  seeing  a  spire? 
Where  is  the  townlet,  or  suburb,  or  slum  that 
has  not  got  its  brand  new  red-brick  Anglican 
church,  or  its  ruddy,  stone-fronted  Bethesda, 
or  its  castellated,  prison-like  Salvation  Bar- 
racks? Furthermore,  the  English  temples 
are  seldom  half  full.  You  have  to  provide 
a  sort  of  religious  variety  entertainment,  with 
services  of  song,  magic-lantern  sermons,  brass 
bands  and  the  like  to  get  the  people  in  at  all; 
whereas  the  churches  of  Ireland  are  full  to 
overflowing,  and  the  congregations  do  not 
require  the  lure  of  a  steady  succession  of 
novelties,  or,  indeed,  any  departure  from  the 
prescribed  offices. 

The  fact  is  that  the  Irish  Church  and  the 
Irish  priesthood  have  been  cruelly  and  bru- 
tally maligned  by  pretty  well  every  sand-blind 
writer  and  carpet-bagging  politician  who  has 
visited  the  country.  We  have  blamed  upon 
the  Church  poverty  and  distress  and  igno- 
rance and  squalor  which  are  the  direct  out- 
come of  bad  government  and  not  of  priestly 
69 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

cupidity.  We  have  said  in  effect  to  our  Irish 
brethren,  "  You  are  too  indigent  to  have  a 
religion,  or  churches,  or  spiritual  guidance. 
Every  penny  you  pay  for  these  things  is  sheer 
waste  of  money,  particularly  as  it  keeps  our 
rents  down.  And  inasmuch  as  you  are  of  one 
Church  and  one  mind — which  is  a  thing  un- 
thinkable in  this  free  and  enlightened  Eng- 
land— you  are  slaves  and  soulless."  But  the 
Church  of  Ireland  goes  on  its  way,  and  in 
the  words  of  Archbishop  Croke,  which  by  the 
way  Mr.  M'Carthy,  Irish  Catholic,  quotes 
with  a  sneer,  "  [The  Irish  priesthood]  holds 
possession  of  the  people's  hearts  to  a  degree 
unknown  to  any  other  priesthood  in  the 
world." 


70 


CHAPTER    IX 

MORALS 

FOR  all  practical  purposes,  and  in  spite  of 
everything  that  can  be  brought  against  her, 
Ireland  may  be  justly  described  as  a  moral 
country,  even  as  Scotland  is  essentially  an 
immoral  country  and  England  a  middling 
one.  It  is  true  that  we  live  in  a  time  when 
morality  has  ceased  to  matter  and  virtue  is 
become  a  reproach.  The  world  has  di- 
vided itself  into  two  camps — the  one  scien- 
tific, the  other  artistic.  Neither  of  them  pro- 
fesses the  smallest  concern  with  morals.  We 
have  invented  new  and  most  blessedly  eupho- 
nious names  for  the  old  wickednesses.  Rob- 
bery is  called  competition;  lying,  smartness; 
effrontery,  pluck;  cowardice,  courtesy;  ava- 
rice, thrift;  cunning,  wisdom,  and  so  forth. 

71 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

And  when  it  pleases  us  we  can  e'en  find 
hard  names  for  the  Christian  graces.  The 
faith  of  Ireland,  for  example,  has  been  dis- 
covered to  be  fanaticism,  bigotry,  paganism, 
materialism,  idolatry,  and  I  know  not  what 
besides;  her  charity  is  credited  to  her  for 
pusillanimity;  her  patience  and  long-suffer- 
ing for  indolence  and  apathy.  What  wonder, 
therefore,  that  the  very  chastity  upon  which 
her  national  morals  are  based  should  at 
length  have  been  assailed.  Hearken  to  the 
inspired  ex-literary  editor  of  the  Daily 
Mail: 

'  The  crowning  achievement  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Ireland,  the  thing 
which  is  unparalleled  elsewhere  in  the  world, 
is  the  complete  and  awful  (sic)  chastity  of 
the  people.  There  is  many  a  country  district 
where  that  incident  which  in  England  and 
Scotland  is  regarded  merely  as  a  slight  mis- 
fortune is  unknown  and  unimagined  by  the 
people.  I  have  seen  a  man,  the  father  of  a 
grown-up  family,  blanch  and  hold  up  his 
72 


MORALS 

hands  at  the  very  name  of  it,  as  though  even 
to  breath  it  were  a  blasphemy.  And  this, 
in  itself  a  good  thing,  has  reached  such  a 
point  that  it  has  become  a  dreadful  evil.  It 
is  no  longer  a  virtue,  it  is  a  blight." 

And  the  dear  young  gentleman  goes  on  to 
assert  that  it  is  the  chastity  of  the  Irish 
people  which  fills  Irish  lunatic  asylums,  and 
exclaims  dithyrambically:  "There  may  be 
no  bastards  in  Ireland,  but  a  hundred  bas- 
tards would,  in  Ireland's  peculiar  circum- 
stances, be  a  more  gracious  and  healthy  sign 
than  one  lunatic."  Here  surely  is  wisdom  of 
the  highest  and  most  delightful  type.  We 
have  already  seen  that  the  increase  of  lunacy 
in  Ireland  has  been  pronounced,  by  the  com- 
mittee which  sat  on  the  question  in  Dublin, 
to  be  mainly  due  to  excessive  drinking  and 
the  assimilation  of  adulterated  spirits.  The 
committee  may  not  have  been  right;  for  my 
own  part  I  believe  it  was  decidedly  wrong. 
But  it  delivered  itself  of  no  pronouncement 
which  warrants  either  the  scientific  or  the 

6  73 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

ribald  to  associate  Irish  lunacy  with  chastity, 
rather  than  with  drink  or  other  predispo- 
sitions. If  chastity  fills  the  lunatic  asylums 
how  come  the  Irish  priesthood  to  be  at  large, 
or  for  that  matter  the  women  of  the  English 
middle  classes,  and  honest  women  all  the 
world  over?  And  if  bastardy  be  a  preventa- 
tive  of  lunacy,  how  comes  it  that  in  Scotland 
you  have  as  many  lunatics  as  you  have  in 
Ireland,  and  about  ten  times  as  many  bas- 
tards? Can  it  be  that  of  two  evils  Cale- 
donia, with  her  customary  shrewdness,  has 
chosen  both  ?  The  suggestion  is  as  ridiculous 
as  it  is  abominable,  and  as  scandalous  as  it  is 
malicious.  Even  in  the  sense  which  our 
Daily  Mail  young  person  may  be  presumed 
to  have  in  mind,  it  is  the  direct  opposite  of 
chastity  that  helps  to  people  lunatic  asylums, 
and  never  chastity  itself,  "  blight "  or  no 
blight.  I  mention  this  wholly  unprecedented 
incursion  into  sophistry  only  by  way  of  show- 
ing what  the  astute  censors  of  Ireland  really 
can  do  when  they  set  themselves  to  the  work ; 

74 


MORALS 

and  although  I  have  no  proof  on  the  subject 
I  should  like  to  wager  that  the  author  of  it 
is  an  Orangeman  and  of  Scotch  extraction. 
It  is  no  compliment  to  Ireland  to  say  that, 
in  theory  at  any  rate,  her  morals  are  entirely 
sound.  In  other  words,  Ireland  believes  in 
virtue  and  goodness,  even  though  she  may 
not  always  succeed  in  living  up  to  her  tenet, 
and  though,  for  reasons  which  need  not  be 
discussed,  she  may  be  possessed  of  primal 
dispositions  to  the  sorriest  evil. 

And  it  is  the  solemn  and  deplorable  fact 
that  there  does  exist  in  the  Irish  blood  a 
tendency  toward  wickedness  of  the  most 
ghastly  and  inhuman  character.  A  case  in 
point  is  afforded  by  the  frightful  doing  to 
death  of  Mrs.  Bridget  Cleary  at  Ballyvad- 
lea  in  1895.  The  following  account  of  this 
tragedy  is  abridged  from  Mr.  M'Carthy's 
Five  Years  in  Ireland: 

"  Mrs.  Cleary  fell  ill  on  Wednesday,  the 
1 3th  of  March,  and  sent  for  a  doctor  and 
a  priest.  The  priest  saw  her  in  the  after- 

75 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

noon.  She  was  in  bed,  and  '  she  did  not 
converse  with  him  except  as  a  priest,  and  her 
conversation  was  quite  coherent  and  intelli- 
gible.' The  doctor  also  saw  her,  thought 
her  illness  slight,  prescribed  for  her  and 
left.  .  .  .  On  the  morning  of  Thurs- 
day the  1 4th  Father  Ryan  '  was  called 
to  see  Mrs.  Cleary  again,  but  he  told  the 
messenger  that  having  administered  the  last 
rites  of  the  Church  on  the  previous  day 
there  was  no  need  to  see  her  again  so 
soon.'  .  .  .  William  Simpson,  a  near 
neighbor  of  the  Clearys,  living  only  200 
yards  off,  accompanied  by  his  wife,  left  their 
own  house  between  nine  and  ten  o'clock  on 
Thursday  evening  to  visit  Mrs.  Cleary,  hav- 
ing heard  she  was  ill.  When  they  ar- 
rived close  to  deary's  house  they  met  Mrs. 
Johanna  Burke,  accompanied  by  her  little 
daughter,  Katie  Burke,  and  inquired  from 
her  how  Mrs.  Cleary  was.  Mrs.  Burke,  her- 
self a  first  cousin  of  Mrs.  Cleary's,  said, 
'  They  are  giving  her  herbs,  got  from  Ganey, 
76 


MORALS 

over  the  mountain,  and  nobody  will  be  let 
in  for  some  time.'  These  four  people  then 
remained  outside  the  house  for  some  time, 
waiting  to  be  let  in.  Simpson  heard  cries 
inside,  and  a  voice  shouting,  '  Take  it,  you 

b ,  you  old  faggot,  or  we  will  burn  you !  ' 

The  shutters  of  the  windows  were  closed  and 
the  door  locked.  After  some  time  the  door 
was  opened  and  from  within  shouts  were 
heard :  '  Away  she  go !  Away  she  go !  '  As 
Simpson  afterward  learned,  the  door  had 
been  opened  to  permit  the  fairies  to  leave 
the  house,  and  the  adjuration  was  addressed 
to  those  '  supernatural '  beings. 

"  In  the  confusion  Simpson,  his  wife,  Mrs. 
Burke,  and  her  little  daughter,  worked  their 
way  into  the  house.  .  .  .  Simpson  saw 
four  men — John  Dunne,  described  as  an  old 
man,  Patrick  Kennedy,  James  Kennedy,  and 
William  Kennedy,  all  young  men,  '  big  black- 
haired  Tipperary  peasants,'  brothers  of  Mrs. 
Burke  and  first  cousins  of  Mrs.  Cleary, 
'  holding  Bridget  Cleary  down  on  the  bed. 

77 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

She  was  on  her  back,  and  had  a  night-dress 
on  her.  Her  husband,  Michael  Cleary,  was 
standing  by  the  bedside.' 

"  Cleary  called  for  a  liquid,  and  said, 
'  Throw  it  on  her.'  Mary  Kennedy,  an  old 
woman,  mother  of  Mrs.  Burke,  and  of  all 
the  other  Kennedys  present,  brought  the 
liquid.  Michael  Kennedy  held  the  saucepan. 
The  liquid  was  dashed  over  Bridget  Cleary 
several  times.  Her  father,  Patrick  Boland, 
was  present.  William  Ahearne,  described  as 
a  delicate  youth  of  sixteen,  was  holding 
a  candle.  Bridget  Cleary  was  struggling, 
vainly,  alas !  on  the  bed,  crying  out,  '  Leave 
me  alone.'  Simpson  then  saw  her  husband 
give  her  some  liquid  with  a  spoon;  she  was 
held  down  by  force  by  the  men  for  ten 
minutes  afterward,  and  one  of  the  men  kept 
his  hand  on  her  mouth.  The  men  at  each  side 
of  the  bed  kept  her  body  swinging  about  the 
whole  time,  and  shouting,  '  Away  with  you ! 
Come  back,  Bridget  Boland,  in  the  name  of 

78 


MORALS 

God!  '  She  screamed  horribly.  They  cried 
out,  '  Come  home,  Bridget  Boland.'  From 
these  proceedings  Simpson  gathered  that 
'  they  thought  Bridget  Cleary  was  a  witch,'  or 
had  a  witch  in  her,  whom  they  (  endeavored 
to  hunt  out  of  the  house  by  torturing  her 
body.' 

"  Some  time  afterward  she  was  lifted  out 
of  the  bed  by  the  men,  or  rather  demons, 
and  carried  to  the  kitchen  fire  by  John  Dunne, 
Patrick,  William,  and  James  Kennedy. 
Simpson  saw  red  marks  on  her  forehead,  and 
some  one  present  said  they  had  to  4  use 
the  red  poker  on  her  to  make  her  take  the 
medicine.'  The  four  men  named  held  poor 
Bridget  Cleary,  in  her  night-dress,  over  the 
fire ;  and  Simpson  *  could  see  her  body  rest- 
ing on  the  bars  of  the  grate  where  the  fire 
was  burning.'  While  this  was  being  done, 
we  learn  that  the  Rosary  was  said.  Her 
husband  put  her  some  questions  at  the  fire. 
He  said  if  she  did  not  answer  her  name 

79 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

three  times  they  would  burn  her.  She,  poor 
thing,  repeated  her  name  three  times  after 
her  father  and  her  husband ! 

"  'Are  you  Bridget  Boland,  wife  of 
Michael  Cleary,  in  the  name  of  God?' 

"''I  am  Bridget  Boland,  daughter  of 
Patrick  Boland,  in  the  name  of  God.' 

"  Simpson  said  they  showed  feverish  anxi- 
ety to  get  her  answers  before  twelve  o'clock. 

"  They  were  all  speaking  and  saying,  Do 
you  think  It  is  her  that  is  there?  And  the 
answer  would  be  '  Yes,'  and  they  were  all 
delighted. 

"  After  she  had  answered  the  questions 
they  put  her  back  into  bed,  and  '  the  women 
put  a  clean  chemise  on  her,'  which  Johanna 
Burke  '  aired  for  her.'  She  was  then  asked 
to  identify  each  person  in  the  room,  and  did 
so  successfully.  The  Kennedys  left  the 
house  at  one  o'clock  '  to  attend  the  wake  of 
deary's  father,'  who  was  lying  dead  that 
night  at  Killenaule!  Dunne  and  Ahearne 
left  at  two  o'clock.  It  was  six  o'clock  on 
80 


MORALS 

the  morning  of  the  I5th,  '  about  daybreak,' 
when  the  Simpsons  and  Johanna  Burke  left 
the  house  after  those  hellish  orgies.  There 
had  been  thirteen  people  present  in  Cleary's 
house  on  that  night,  yet  no  one  outside  the 
circle  of  the  perpetrators  themselves  seems 
to  have  known,  or  cared,  if  they  knew,  of 
the  devilish  goings-on  in  that  laborer's  cot- 
tage. 

"  At  one  time  during  that  horrible  night 
the  poor  victim  said,  '  The  police  are  at  the 
window.  Let  ye  mind  me  now ! '  But  there 
were  no  police  there. 

"  We  now  come  to  the  third  day,  Friday, 
1 5th  of  March.  Six  o'clock  on  that  morning 
found  Michael  Cleary,  the  chief  actor, 
Patrick  Boland  and  Mary  Kennedy  in  the 
house  with  the  poor  victim,  when  the  two 
Simpsons  and  the  two  Burkes  were  leaving. 
Simpson  says,  '  Cleary  then  went  for  the 
priest,  as  he  wanted  to  have  Mass  said  in 
the  house  to  banish  the  evil  spirits.'  This 
brings  us  back  again  to  the  Rev.  Father  Ryan, 
81 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

who  says,  '  At  seven  o'clock  on  Friday  morn- 
ing I  was  next  summoned.  Michael  Cleary 
asked  me  to  come  to  his  house  and  cele- 
brate Mass:  his  wife  had  had  a  very 
bad  night?  .  .  .  Father  Ryan  arrived 
at  the  cottage  at  a  quarter  past  eight,  and 
said  Mass  in  that  awful  front  room  where 
poor  Bridget  Cleary  was  lying  in  bed.  .  .  . 
"  '  She  seemed  more  nervous  and  excited 
than  on  Wednesday,'  he  says,  and  adds,  '  her 
husband  and  father  were  present  before 
Mass  began,  but  I  could  not  say  who  was 
there  during  its  celebration.'  He  had  no 
conversation  with  Michael  Cleary  '  as  to  any 
incident  which  had  occurred,'  because  he  sus- 
pected nothing.  *  When  leaving,'  he  said, 
'  I  asked  Cleary  was  he  giving  his  wife  the 
medicine  the  doctor  ordered?  Cleary  an- 
swered that  he  had  no  faith  in  it.  I  told  him 
that  it  should  be  administered.  Cleary 
replied  that  people  may  have  some  remedy  of 
their  own  that  could  do  more  good  than  doc- 
tor's medicine?  Yet,  Father  Ryan  left  the 
82 


MORALS 

house  '  suspecting  nothing.'  '  Had  he  any 
suspicion  of  foul  play  or  witchcraft,'  he  says, 
'  he  should  have  at  once  absolutely  refused  to 
say  Mass  in  the  house,  and  have  given  in- 
formation to  the  police?  .  .  . 

"  After  Father  Ryan  had  said  his  Mass 
and  left,  Mrs.  Cleary  remained  in  bed. 
Simpson  saw  her  there  at  midday  and  never 
saw  her  afterward.  His  excuse  for  his  pres- 
ence and  non-interference  on  Thursday  night 
is  that  '  the  door  was  locked,  and  he  could 
not  get  out.'  We  find  the  names  of  still  more 
people  mentioned  as  having  visited  her  this 
day.  She  seems,  judging  from  the  number 
of  visitors,  to  have  been  extremely  popular. 
Johanna  Burke  seems  to  have  been  in  the 
house  the  greater  part  of  this  day.  At  one 
time  she  tells  how  Cleary  came  up  to  the 
bedside  and  handed  his  wife  a  canister,  and 
said  there  was  £20  in  it.  She,  poor 
creature,  took  it,  tied  it  up,  '  and  told  her 
husband  to  take  care  of  it,  that  he  would 
not  know  the  difference  till  he  was  without 

83 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

it.'     She  was  '  in  her  right  mind,  only  fright- 
ened at  everything.' 

"  At  length  the  night  fell  upon  the  scene; 
and,  at  eight  o'clock,  Cleary,  who  seems  to 
have  ordered  all  the  other  actors  about  as 
if  they  were  hypnotized,  sent  Johanna  Burke 
and  her  little  daughter  Katie  for  '  Thomas 
Smith  and  David  Hogan.'  Smith  says,  *  We 
all  went  to  deary's,  and  found  Michael 
Cleary,  Mary  Kennedy,  Johanna  Meara,  Pat 
Leahy,  and  Pat  Boland  in  the  bedroom.' 
The  husband  had  a  bottle  in  his  hand,  and 
said  to  the  poor  bewildered  wife,  '  Will  you 
take  this  now,  as  Tom  Smith  and  David 
Hogan  are  here?  In  the  name  of  the  Father, 
Son,  and  Holy  Ghost ! '  Tom  Smith,  a  man 
who  said  '  he  had  known  her  always  since 
she  was  born,'  then  inquired  what  was  in 
the  bottle,  and  Cleary  told  him  it  was  holy 
water.  Poor  Bridget  Cleary  said  *  Yes,'  and 
she  took  it.  She  had  to  say,  before  taking 
it,  '  In  the  name  of  the  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost,'  which  she  did.  Smith  and 
84 


MORALS 

Hogan  then  left  the  bedside  and  '  went  and 
sat  at  the  fire.'  Cleary  told  them  that  his 
wife,  '  as  she  had  company,  was  going  to 
get  up.'  She  actually  left  her  bed,  put  on 
1  a  frock  and  shawl,'  and  came  to  the  kitchen 
fire.  The  talk  turned  upon  bishogues,  or 
witchcraft  and  charms.  Smith  remained  there 
till  twelve  o'clock,  and  then  left  the  house, 
leaving  Michael  Cleary  (husband),  Patrick 
Boland  (father),  Mary  Kennedy  (aunt), 
Patrick,  James,  and  William  Kennedy  (cous- 
ins), Johanna  Burke,  and  her  little  daughter 
Katie  (also  cousins) ,  behind  him  in  the  house. 
Thomas  Smith  never  saw  Bridget  Cleary 
after  that.  According  to  Johanna  Burke, 
they  continued  '  talking  about  fairies,'  and 
poor  Bridget  Cleary,  sitting  there  by  the  fire 
in  her  frock  and  shawl,  wan  and  terrified, 
had  said  to  her  husband,  '  Your  mother  used 
to  go  with  the  fairies;  that  is  why  you  think 
I  am  going  with  them.' 

"'Did   my   mother   tell   you    that?'  ex- 
claimed Cleary. 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

'  She   did.     That  she  gave  two  nights 
with  them,'  replied  she.    .     .    . 

"  Johanna  Burke  then  says  that  she  made 
tea  and  '  offered  Bridget  Cleary  a  cup.'  But 
Cleary  jumped  up,  and  getting  '  three  bits 
of  bread  and  jam,'  said  she  would  '  have 
to  eat  them  before  she  could  take  a  sup.' 
He  asked  her  as  he  gave  her  each  bit,  '  Are 
you  Bridget  Cleary,  wife  of  Michael  Cleary, 
in  the  name  of  the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Ghost  ?  '  The  poor,  desolate  young  woman 
answered  twice  and  swallowed  two  pieces. 
We  all  know  how  difficult  it  is,  when  wasted 
by  suffering  and  excited  by  fear,  to  swallow 
a  bit  of  dry  bread  without  a  drop  of  liquid 
to  soften  it.  It,  in  fact,  was  the  task  set  to 
those  in  the  olden  days  who  had  to  undergo 
the  '  ordeal  by  bread.'  How  many  of  them, 
we  are  told,  failed  to  accomplish  it!  Poor 
Bridget  Cleary  failed  now  at  the  third  bit 
presented  to  her  by  the  demon  who  con- 
fronted her.  She  could  not  answer  the  third 
time. 

86 


MORALS 

"  He  *  forced  her  to  eat  the  third  bit.' 
He  threatened  her,  '  If  you  won't  take  it, 
down  you  go ! '  He  flung  her  to  the  ground, 
put  his  knee  on  her  chest,  and  one  hand  on 
her  throat,  forcing  the  bit  of  bread  and  jam 
down  her  throat. 

"  '  Swallow  it,  swallow  it.  Is  it  down? 
Is  it  down?'  he  cried. 

"  The  woman  Burke  says  she  said  to  him, 
'  Mike,  let  her  alone ;  don't  you  see  it  is 
Bridget  that  is  in  it?  '  and  explains,  '  He  sus- 
pected it  was  a  fairy  and  not  his  wife.' 

"  Let  Burke  now  tell  how  the  hellish 
murder  was  accomplished :  '  Michael  Cleary 
stripped  his  wife's  clothes  off,  except  her 
chemise,  and  got  a  lighted  stick  out  of  the 
fire,  and  held  it  near  her  mouth.  My  mother 
(Mary  Kennedy),  brothers  (Patrick,  James, 
and  William  Kennedy),  and  myself  wanted 
to  leave,  but  Cleary  said  he  had  the  key 
of  the  door,  and  the  door  would  not  be 
opened  till  he  got  his  wife  back.' 

"  They  were  crying  in  the  room  and  want- 

8? 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

ing  to  get  out.  This  crowd  in  the  room  cry- 
ing, while  Cleary  was  killing  their  first  cousin 
in  the  kitchen! 

"  c  I  saw  Cleary  throw  lamp-oil  on  her. 
When  she  was  burning,  she  turned  to  me  ' 
(imagine  that  face  of  woe!)  *  and  called  out, 
"  Oh,  Han,  Han !  "  I  endeavored  to  get 
out  for  the  peelers.  My  brother  William 
went  up  into  the  other  room  and  fell  in  a 
weakness,  and  my  mother  threw  Easter  water 
over  him.  Bridget  Cleary  was  all  this  time 
burning  on  the  hearth,  and  the  house  was  full 
of  smoke  and  smell.  I  had  to  go  up  to  the 
room,  I  could  not  stand  it.  Cleary  then 
came  up  into  the  room  where  we  were  and 
took  away  a  large  sack  bag.  He  said,  "  Hold 
your  tongue,  Hannah,  it  is  not  Bridget  I  am 
burning.  You  will  soon  see  her  go  up  into 
the  chimney."  My  brothers,  James  and 
William,  said,  "  Burn  her  if  you  like,  but 
give  us  the  key  and  let  us  get  out."  While 
she  was  burning,  Cleary  screamed  out,  "  She 
is  burned  now.  God  knows  I  did  not  mean 
88 


MORALS 

to  do  it."  When  I  looked  down  into  the 
other  room  again,  /  saw  the  remains  of 
Bridget  Cleary  lying  on  the  floor  on  a  sheet. 
She  was  lying  on  her  face  and  her  legs  turned 
upward,  as  if  they  had  contracted  in  burning. 
She  was  dead  and  burned.' ' 

There  is  nothing  which  quite  parallels  the 
foregoing  in  the  whole  history  of  crime.  At 
least  a  dozen  persons,  male  and  female,  had 
knowledge  of  what  was  going  on  in  that 
dreadful  household  over  three  days.  Not 
one  of  them  had  bowels  of  compassion,  not 
one  of  them  lifted  a  little  finger  in  the  vic- 
tim's behalf.  The  majority  of  them  were 
her  blood  relations,  all  of  them  were  Catho- 
lics, not  one  of  them  but  could  have  informed 
the  priest,  the  doctor  or  the  police  of  what 
was  taking  place  had  he  or  she  been  so 
minded.  But  the  devilish  poison  raging  in 
the  blood  of  the  woman's  husband  raged  also 
in  their  veins.  They  stood  fascinated  in  the 
presence  of  superstitions  which  they  had 
7  89 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

drawn  in  with  their  mother's  milk.  They 
believed  in  their  hearts  that  Cleary  and  them- 
selves were  righteously,  if  terribly,  occupied. 
They  said  the  Rosary.  And  they  did  all 
things  in  the  name  of  the  Father,  the  Son  and 
the  Holy  Ghost ! 


90 


CHAPTER    X 

PRETTY    WOMEN 

THE  women  of  England,  not  to  say  of 
Scotland,  have  of  late  years  lain  under  the 
reproach  that  they  are  ceasing  to  be  possessed 
of  the  fatal  gift  of  beauty.  I  am  well  aware 
that  there  is  not  a  reviewer  exercising  his  call- 
ing between  Land's  End  and  John  o'  Groats 
who  will  not  profess  to  foam  at  the  mouth  on 
the  strength  of  this  statement.  Yet  the  fact 
remains  that  ugliness  is  rapidly  becoming  the 
common  heritage  of  English  women  and 
Scotch  women  alike.  There  is  an  old  super- 
stition, not,  of  course,  tolerable  to  the  minds 
of  the  smart  people  of  to-day,  that  wicked- 
ness, or,  not  to  put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it, 
ugliness  of  temperament  is  calculated  grad- 
ually to  induce  ugliness  of  physique.  With- 
out going  into  the  question  of  the  general 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

wickedness  of  Anglo-Saxon  femininity,  we 
may  put  it  down  for  a  scientific  fact  that  the 
beauty  of  them  is  wearing  away — let  us  hope 
to  the  land  of  the  leal.  In  those  remarkably 
aesthetic  organs  which  sell  fifty  process-block 
portraits  per  week  for  sixpence,  we  are  treat- 
ed continually  to  what  the  editors  take  for 
types  of  English  beauty.  You  pay  your  six- 
pence and  you  open  your  hot-pressed  beauty- 
show.  On  the  first  page — that  is,  of  course, 
after  the  advertisements — you  have  a  speak- 
ing presentment  of  something  with  elaborate 
hair  and  an  inexhaustible  fund  of  torso  which, 
frankly,  might  pass  very  well  for  a  sign  to  a 
public-house  called  "  The  Bald-faced  Stag." 
Beneath  you  read  in  capital  letters  "  Miss  or 
MRS.  So  AND  So — THE  FAMOUS  BEAUTY." 
No  woman  in  England  apparently  is  allowed 
to  know  whether  she  be  beautiful  or  not  un- 
til either  Mr.  Keble  Howard  Bell  or  Mr. 
J.  M.  Bulloch  has  so  labeled  her;  Bell  and 
Bulloch  being,  of  course,  the  only  possible 
judges  of  feminine  beauty  England  possesses. 
92 


PRETTY   WOMEN 

In  the  politest  circles  it  is  quite  dangerous  to 
praise  a  woman's  good  looks  without  refer- 
ence to  the  files  of  The  Sketch  and  The  Tat- 
ler.  A  certain  nobleman,  however,  is  under- 
stood to  have  earned  something  of  a  reputa- 
tion for  himself  as  connoisseur  by  openly 
avowing  his  contempt  for  both  sheets,  and 
surreptitiously  swotting  up  the  picture  pages 
of  the  Daily  Mirror.  This,  however,  like 
the  Daily  Mirror,  is  probably  neither  here 
nor  there.  The  solemn  fact  remains  that  the 
beauty  of  England's  fairest  daughters  and 
Scotland's  bonniest  lasses  alike,  has  become 
a  doubtful  quantity.  Any  person  who  is 
troubled  with  qualms  on  the  subject  need  only 
visit  a  Court,  or  the  Opera,  or  Messrs.  Peter 
Robinson's,  or  an  A.  B.  C.  shop,  or  a  moth- 
ers' meeting.  Hard  faces,  bleary  eyes,  saw 
teeth,  humpy  shoulders,  and  an  undignified 
gait,  not  to  mention  greasy  complexions, 
scanty  hair,  bony  hands  and  knock  knees,  are 
the  rule  and  not  the  exception  among  Eng- 
lish womankind.  We  have  scarcely  a  beauty 
93 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

left,  even  at  the  Gaiety  Theater.  In  fact, 
leaving  out  the  ravishing  pictures  of  the  il- 
lustrated press,  there  are  really  only  two  beau- 
tiful women  in  England,  and  both  of  these 
are  married  to  reviewers.  Now,  I  say  and 
maintain  that  any  male  person,  possessed  of 
an  eye  for  the  charms  of  what  is  commonly 
called  the  opposite  sex,  will  find  that  in  Ire- 
land the  decay  of  female  beauty  has  not  yet 
commenced.  Whether  he  be  in  Dublin  or  in 
Cork,  in  Sligo  or  in  Limerick,  pretty  women 
take  his  vision — as  the  daffodils  take  the 
winds  of  March — at  every  corner.  In  fine, 
it  may  be  said  without  exaggeration  that  if 
Ireland  possesses  a  characteristic  which,  ren- 
ders her  entirely  different  from  the  countries 
to  which,  on  the  face  of  it,  she  displays  a  sort 
of  second  hand,  tumble-down  resemblance,  it 
is  the  prettiness  of  her  women.  I  take  it  for 
granted  that  this  trait  has  been  commented 
upon  by  other  travelers;  but  I  do  not  think 
that  it  has  heretofore  been  in  any  sense  prop- 
erly impressed  upon  the  public  mind.  It  is 
94 


PRETTY    WOMEN 

generally  understood  among  artists  that  Irish 
women  have  delicate  hands  and  an  eye  with  a 
sparkle  about  it.  Irish  poets,  in  more  or  less 
halting  English  verse,  have  done  their  best 
to  indicate  that  Irish  women  are,  to  say  the 
least  of  it,  worth  looking  at.  But  I  am  not 
aware  that  on  the  whole  the  literature  about 
Ireland  insists,  to  anything  like  a  reasonable 
degree,  on  the  beauty  of  Irish  women.  If  the 
present  work  were  from  the  "  exquisite  "  pen 
of  Mr.  Arthur  Symons,  our  failure  adequately 
to  portray  the  beauty  of  Erin's  daughters 
would,  no  doubt,  be  counterbalanced  by  the 
insertion  of  a  selection  of  half-tone  portraits 
of  representative  specimens.  As  it  is  we  are 
compelled  to  admit  that  words  fail  us,  and 
that,  even  if  we  cared  to  employ  them,  the 
process-block  makers  would  fail  us  also. 

It  may  be  said  roughly,  that  the  beauty 
of  an  Irish  woman,  while  quite  tangible  and 
perfect  to  the  vision,  is  an  elusive  matter 
when  one  comes  to  cold  type.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  beauty  can  be  hit  off  in  words,  quite 
95 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

as  handily  as  she  can  be  hit  off  in  paint.  What 
she  amounts  to  as  a  rule  is  pink  and  white, 
and  yellow  hair,  or  mouse-colored  hair,  and  a 
genteel  pallidity.  But  in  Ireland  all  this  is 
different,  beauty  of  a  witching  and  almost 
eerie  quality  is  a  cofnmonplace  throughout 
the  country.  An  Irishman  will  speak  to  you 
of  "  the  red-haired  woman,"  or  "  that  shlip 
of  a  girl,"  when  he  means  pieces  of  loveliness 
that  Titian  might  have  given  his  eye  teeth 
for  a  sight  of.  In  France  at  the  present  mo- 
ment there  is  an  artist  who  is  understood  to 
be  making  a  fortune  by  drawing  pretty  faces. 
He  could  find  more  subjects  for  his  pencil  in 
a  day  in  Dublin  than  he  could  find  in  a  month 
in  Paris.  For  this  information  I  make  no 
charge.  Even  Mr.  Gibson,  who  appears  to 
have  invented  a  "  girl  "  of  his  own,  might  do 
very  well  out  of  the  green  country.  Mr. 
Gibson's  young  lady  is  believed  to  typify  the 
fairest  that  the  United  States  of  America  can 
boast.  At  times,  and  when  Mr.  Gibson  is  at 
his  best,  she  is  undoubtedly  a  young  woman 


PRETTY   WOMEN 

of  prepossessing  appearance.  That  she  is 
also  a  truly  American  type  may  be  taken  for 
granted.  There  are  plenty  of  women  in  Ire- 
land, however,  who  come  quite  up  to  the 
Gibson  girl  standard,  and  for  that  matter 
beat  it.  In  journeying  through  the  country 
I  have  been  struck  continually  by  the  remark- 
able facial  resemblance  which  exists  between 
the  Irish  and  the  American  people.  In  an 
Irish  railway  train  you  see  faces  which  at  once 
give  you  the  impression  that  you  are  at  the 
Hotel  Cecil.  The  high  cheek  bones  and  lank 
shaven  jaw  of  the  full-blooded  American  are 
here  in  great  force,  and  it  is  only  when  their 
possessors  open  their  mouths  that  you  can  tell 
the  difference.  Of  course,  the  thing  is  ac- 
counted for  by  the  fact  that  a  very  consider- 
able proportion  of  the  population  of  America 
is  Irish,  and  that  for  a  hundred  years  Ireland 
has  been  sending  her  best  blood  to  those 
states. 

Besides  being  comely,  the  Irish  women  have 
the  advantage  of  what  one  may  term  an  indi- 

97 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

vidual  beauty.  In  England  you  might  rake 
together  twenty  beautiful  blondes  and  twenty 
pretty  brunettes,  and  discover  that  they  were 
merely  blondes  and  brunettes  and  nothing 
more.  That  is  to  say  the  blondes  might  read- 
ily pass  for  sisters,  and  so  might  the  brunettes, 
both  sorts  lacking  the  ultimate  gift  of  indi- 
viduality. Irish  women  are  different — in- 
deed, you  may  safely  say  of  them  that  they 
are  all  pretty  and  all  different.  They  never 
repeat  their  beauty,  there  is  nothing  of  the 
white  rabbit  or  puss,  puss,  puss  about  them, 
and  consequently  they  do  not  bore  you.  As 
most  things  have  a  cause  it  seems  possible 
that  there  are  reasons  for  the  beauty  of  Irish 
womanhood.  For  myself  I  should  be  dis- 
posed to  ascribe  it  to  the  circumstance  that 
the  average  Irish  woman,  be  she  rich  or  poor, 
leads  the  life  which  a  woman  was  intended 
to  lead  by  the  order  of  things,  namely,  the 
domestic  life.  Irish  women  are  not  without 
the  wit  to  know  that  they  are  beautiful;  they 
have  an  armory  of  feminine  allurements,  and 
98 


PRETTY    WOMEN 

wit  enough  to  handle  them  with  skill,  and 
they  cannot  be  considered  insensible  to  the 
fripperies  which  all  women  love.  But  they 
do  not  make  gaiety  and  ostentation  the  aim 
and  end  of  their  existence,  and  they  do  not 
shirk  the  plain  duties  of  womanhood.  In  Ire- 
land, though  the  women  of  the  poorer  classes 
have  to  work  in  the  fields  and  undertake  tasks 
which  by  good  rights  should  be  done  by  men, 
there  is  absolutely  no  third  sex.  The  manly 
woman,  the  emancipated  woman,  and  the  im- 
pertinent flat-chested  typewriter  banger,  which 
so  infest  Great  Britain,  are  unknown.  Even 
the  Irish  sportswoman — and,  as  everybody 
knows,  she  is  pretty  numerous — retains  her 
womanliness  in  a  way  that  is  quite  beyond 
the  horsey  or  doggy  woman  of  the  Shires. 
So  that  in  one  respect  at  least  Ireland  may 
be  reckoned  something  of  a  paradise. 


99 


CHAPTER    XI 

THE   LONDON   IRISH 

THE  Irishman  in  London  appears  to  lose 
a  great  deal  of  his  luster.  If  you  wish  to  see 
him  at  his  best  in  this  Metropolis  you  must 
go  to  the  Bar.  If  you  wish  to  see  him  at 
his  worst  you  must  go  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. And  both  best  and  worst  are  pretty 
bad.  The  Irishmen  at  the  Bar  shall  not  be 
named,  but  all  the  world  knows  that  they 
are  a  fairly  ill-conditioned  community — sav- 
age, rude,  reasonably  illiterate,  and  not  in  the 
least  witty.  Many  of  them  model  themselves 
on  the  late  Lord  Russell  and  come  off  ac- 
cordingly. Others  again  are  beefy  and  vul- 
gar and  notorious  bullies.  The  judicial  bench 
does  not  include  an  Irish  judge.  Possibly 
this  is  fortunate.  In  London  journalism  the 
Irish  scarcely  count.  Mr.  W.  M.  Thompson 
100 


THE    LONDON   IRISH 

edits  a  sheet  called  Reynolds' s  Newspaper  to 
the  complete  satisfaction  of  Mr.  Clement 
Shorter,  and  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor  edits 
T.  P.'s  Weekly  and  M.  A.  P.,  both  of  them 
journals  with  which  London  could  well  afford 
to  dispense.  As  for  Irish  reporters  and  sub- 
editors, they  are  few  and  timid  and  well  un- 
der the  heel  of  the  Scotch,  who  are  numerous 
and  rampant  and  unblushing.  In  the  minor 
professions,  such  as  physic,  publishing,  and 
stockbroking,  the  Irish  do  not  figure  at  all 
impressively.  The  truly  great  physicians  of 
London  are  mostly  Scotch,  so — thank  Heav- 
en I — are  the  truly  great  publishers ;  while  the 
stockbrokers  are  commonly  believed  to  be- 
long to  the  tribe  of  Manasseh.  Of  the  poli- 
ticians a  great  deal  more  has  been  written 
than  the  politicians  are  worth.  Let  us  draw 
a  decent  green  veil  over  them.  Few  English- 
men nowadays  know  which  of  them  is  alive 
and  which  of  them  is  dead;  neither  can  one 
tell  off-hand  whether  they  are  for  the  Gov- 
ernment or  agin  it.  I  have  heard  rumors  of 
101 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

the  existence  in  London  of  an  Irish  Literary 
Society.  Somewhere  in  Holborn  there  exists, 
too,  I  am  told,  an  Irish  Club.  So  far  as  let- 
ters are  concerned,  London  is  pretty  well  de- 
nuded of  Irishmen.  Mr.  George  Moore  no 
longer  abides  with  us.  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats 
has  latterly  preferred  Dublin  to  the  Euston 
Road.  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw  has  be- 
come an  American  playwright.  If  these  gen- 
tlemen are  members  of  the  Irish  Literary  So- 
ciety so  much  the  better  for  the  Irish  Literary 
Society.  There  is  an  Irish  poetess  resident 
in  Twickenham,  but  Who's  Who  informs  us 
that  her  Celtic  quality  has  not  been  stimulated 
by  a  sojourn  in  her  native  land.  The  Irish 
Club  would  seem  to  devote  itself  to  "  Smok- 
ers," "  Socials,"  and  "  Enjoyable  Evenings." 
Its  saturnalia  are  duly  reported  in  Reynolds' s 
Newspaper.  Probably  the  most  distinguished 
Irishman  in  the  Metropolis  is  Sir  Thomas 
Lipton,  whose  name  is  as  prominently  asso- 
ciated with  sport  as  it  is  with  tea.  Then 
there  are  the  Irish  Guards,  one  of  the  finest 
102 


THE    LONDON   IRISH 

bodies  of  men  in  the  King's  service,  and  Mr. 
Dennis  O'Sullivan,  England's  only  Irish 
actor.  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  London 
Irish  do  not  shine  effulgently.  None  of  them 
is  at  the  top  of  things,  as  it  were;  none  of 
them  has  got  very  far  above  the  middling. 
The  reason  no  doubt  is  that  the  Irish  tem- 
perament is  coy.  The  Scotchman  who  comes 
to  London  knows  that  he  is  an  alien  and  an 
interloper,  and  despised  of  his  fellow-men, 
but  he  blusters  it  out.  The  Irishman,  on  the 
other  hand,  feels  his  position  keenly  and  re- 
fuses to  be  other  than  diffident.  As  a  rule, 
too,  he  is  without  commercial  aptitude,  and 
not  vastly  taken  with  the  blessed  word  thrift. 
Besides  which,  Irishmen  do  not  come  to  Lon- 
don in  droves,  as  do  the  Scotch.  When  they 
emigrate,  their  natural  tendency  is  toward 
America.  In  any  case  it  cannot  be  suggested 
that  the  London  Irish  have  at  any  time  pre- 
sumed to  be  aggressive.  Neither  have  they 
made  pretensions  to  superiority,  or  exhibited 
a  disposition  to  clannishness.  That  they  do 
103 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

not  count  is  therefore  probably  their  own 
fault;  for  London,  in  a  greater  degree  per- 
haps than  any  other  city  in  the  world,  is  al- 
ways open  to  prostrate  herself  before  the  in- 
vader, providing  he  be  assertive  and  pushful 
enough.  Leaving  out  the  more  or  less  emi- 
nent, and  glancing  for  a  moment  at  the  com- 
mon rank  of  Irishmen  in  London,  one  is  con- 
fronted with  two  facts,  and  two  facts  only. 
The  first  of  them  is  that  the  London  Irish 
can  muster  in  sufficient  force  to  make  a  St. 
Patrick's  Day  concert  or  so  financially  suc- 
cessful, and  the  second  is  that  the  morning 
after,  the  metropolitan  magistrates  have  in- 
variably to  deal  with  a  fairly  noble  batch  of 
Irish  "  drunks."  Practically  this  is  all  that 
is  known  by  the  Cockney  respecting  his  Irish 
fellow-citizen,  and  I  think  that  it  is  distinctly 
unfortunate  for  Ireland,  because  it  fosters  a 
false  impression.  The  Scotch,  who  are  wilier, 
take  great  care  not  to  get  drunk  on  St.  An- 
drew's Day. 


104 


CHAPTER   XII 

TOM  MOORE 

IN  The  Treasury  of  Irish  Poetry  in  the 
English  Tongue,  edited  by  Messrs.  Stopford 
A.  Brooke  and  T.  W.  Rolliston,  Thomas 
Moore  is  represented  by  eleven  pieces,  to 
wit,  "  The  Song  of  Fionnuola,"  "  The  Irish 
Peasant  to  his  Mistress,"  "At  the  Mid 
Hour  of  Night,"  "When  He  who  Adores 
Thee,"  "  After  the  Battle,"  "  The  Light  of 
Other  Days,"  "  On  Music,"  "  Echo,"  "  As 
Slow  our  Ship,"  "  No,  not  more  Welcome," 
and  "  My  .Birthday."  I  do  not  suppose  for 
a  moment  that  the  editors  intended  to  sug- 
gest that  this  selection  represents  in  any  sense 
the  more  popular  of  Moore's  writings  from 
the  Irish  point  of  view.  Only  two  of  the 
lyrics,  indeed,  namely,  "  The  Light  of  Other 
8  105 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

Days  "  and  "  As  Slow  our  Ship,"  are  really 
well  known  among  lovers  of  poetry,  even  in 
Ireland.  We  assume,  therefore,  that  the 
remaining  sets  of  verses  have  been  inserted 
because,  in  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Stopford  A. 
Brooke  and  his  co-editor,  they  are  the  best 
of  Moore,  qua  poet  in  the  English  tongue. 
We  quote  here  at  length  "  The  Song  of 
Fionnuola  " : 

"  Silent,  O  Moyle,  be  the  roar  of  thy  water  ; 

Break  not,  ye  breezes,  your  chain  of  repose, 
While,  murmuring  mournfully,  Lir's  lonely  daughter 

Tells  to  the  night-star  her  tale  of  woes. 
When  shall  the  swan,  her  death-note  singing, 

Sleep,  with  wings  in  darkness  furl'd  ? 
When  will  heaven,  its  sweet  bells  ringing, 

Call  my  spirit  from  this  stormy  world  ? 

Sadly,  O  Moyle,  to  thy  winter-wave  weeping, 

Fate  bids  me  languish  long  ages  away  ; 
Yet  still  in  her  darkness  doth  Erin  lie  sleeping, 

Still  doth  the  pure  light  its  dawning  delay. 
When  will  that  day-star,  mildly  springing, 

Warm  our  isle  with  peace  and  love  ? 
When  will  heaven,  its  sweet  bells  ringing, 

Call  my  spirit  to  the  fields  above  ?  " 

106 


TOM    MOORE 

As  the  devil  might  inquire — Is  this  poetry? 
I  believe  that  I  shall  have  with  me  the 
sounder  critics  when  I  say  that  it  is  small 
sentiment  very  carelessly  set  down.  In  six- 
teen lines  we  have  quite  a  number  of  different 
measures,  and  Moore  would  seem  to  have 
labored  under  the  impression  that  he  was 
writing  in  one.  In  other  words,  the  verses 
halt.  As  to  the  sentiment,  nobody  can  ques- 
tion its  utter  banality.  What  a  critic  of 
Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's  caliber  can  see  in  it, 
Heaven  alone  knows.  He  might  have  got 
better  verses  and  better  sentiment  out  of  any 
average  breach  of  promise  case.  Nor  are 
the  remaining  pieces  much  above  the  standard 
required  by  those  eminent  judges  of  poetry, 
the  gentlemen  who  write  morceaux  for  the 
drawing-room.  For  myself  I  venture  the 
opinion  that  Moore  lives  on  the  strength  of 
"  Rich  and  Rare  were  the  Gems  she  Wore," 
"  The  Meeting  of  the  Waters,"  "  The  Harp 
that  once  through  Tara's  Halls,"  "  Believe 
Me  if  all  Those  Endearing  Young  Charms," 
107 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

"  The  Minstrel  Boy,"  "  The  Last  Rose  of 
Summer,"  and  the  "  Canadian  Boat  Song," 
most  of  which  efforts  have  been  set  to  music, 
and  are  thereby  materially  aided  to  survival. 
So  that  on  the  whole  Thomas  Moore  may 
not  be  reckoned  as  in  any  sense  a  purveyor 
of  the  higher  kinds  of  poetry.  It  is  credit- 
able, however,  to  the  Irish  people  that  they 
should  have  produced  and  put  their  emo- 
tional and  moral  trust  in  a  Moore,  rather 
than  a  Burns.  But  morals  on  one  side, 
Burns  is  immeasurably  the  greater  poet,  even 
though  at  times  he  wrote  drivel  of  the  fee- 
blest sort.  All  the  same  it  must  be  confessed 
that  the  general  consent  which  keeps  Moore 
at  the  head  of  the  Irish  poets  is  sufficiently 
grounded.  For  weak  vessel  though  he  may 
be,  we  do  not  find  another  Irish  poet  in  the 
English  tongue  who  could  properly  be  placed 
above  him.  Right  down  to  and  including 
William  Allingham,  the  history  of  Irish 
poetry  in  the  English  tongue  has  been  the 
history  of  happy-go-lucky  mediocrity.  Even 
108 


TOM    MOORE 

Mangan,  who  has  latterly  been  credited  with 
a  share  of  the  authentic  fire,  exhibits  a  facil- 
ity, a  slipshodness  and  an  aptness  to  the  banal 
which  savor  of  the  librettist.  From  his  most 
considerable  production  we  take  the  follow- 
ing stanzas: 

THE   NAMELESS   ONE 

Roll  forth,  my  song,  like  the  rushing  river 

That  sweeps  along  to  the  mighty  sea  ; 
God  will  inspire  me  while  I  deliver 
My  soul  to  thee  ! 

Tell  thou  the  world,  when  bones  lie  whitening 

Amid  the  last  homes  of  youth  and  eld, 
That  there  once  was  one  whose  veins  ran  lightning 
No  eye  beheld. 

Tell  how  his  boyhood  was  one  drear  night-hour, 

How  shone  for  him,  through  his  griefs  and  gloom, 
No  star  of  all  heaven  sends  to  light  our 
Path  to  the  tomb. 

Roll  on,  my  song,  and  to  after-ages 

Tell  how,  disdaining  all  earth  can  give, 
He  would  have  taught  men  from  wisdom's  pages 
The  way  to  live. 

109 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

And  tell  how  trampled,  derided,  hated, 

And  worn  by  weakness,  disease,  and  wrong, 
He  fled  for  shelter  to  God,  who  mated 
His  soul  with  song — 

With  song  which  alway,  sublime  or  rapid, 
Flowed  like  a  rill  in  the  morning  beam, 
Perchance  not  deep,  but  intense  and  rapid — 
A  mountain  stream. 

Tell  how  the  Nameless,  condemned  for  years  long 

To  herd  with  demons  from  hell  beneath, 
Saw  things  that  made  him,  with  groans  and  tears,  long 
For  even  death. 

Go  on  to  tell  how,  with  genius  wasted, 

Betrayed  in  friendship,  befooled  in  love, 
With  spirit  shipwrecked,  and  young  hopes  blasted, 
He  still,  still  strove. 

There  may  be  lyrical  impulse  here,  but  it 
is  of  quite  an  ordinary  quality.  The  much 
vaunted  line  about  "  veins  that  ran  light- 
ning," could,  I  think,  be  paralleled  out  of 
previous  poets,  and  the  first  half  of  it  is 
clumsy  and  cacophonous.  "  Night-hour " 
and  "  light  our  "  might  have  stepped  straight 
no 


TOM    MOORE 

out  of  the  comic  poets,  and  the  same  may  be 
said  of  "  years  long "  and  "  tears,  long," 
which  J.  K.  Stephen  would  have  chortled 
over  for  a  "  metrical  effect."  And  when  we 
come  to  "  still,  still  strove  "  we  are  among 
the  librettists  with  a  vengeance.  I  have  seen 
James  Clarence  Mangan  collocated  with  Poe. 
If  comparisons  with  America  must  be  made, 
we  should  range  him  alongside  that  bright 
spirit,  Ella  Wheeler  Wilcox. 

For  Sir  Samuel  Fergusson,  he  has  been 
highly  praised  by  Mr.  Swinburne,  Aubrey  de 
Vere,  and,  of  course,  by  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats. 
Mr.  Yeats  pronounces  him  to  be  "  the  great- 
est poet  Ireland  has  produced,  one  who, 
among  the  somewhat  sybaritic  singers  of 
his  day  was  like  some  aged  sea-king  sitting 
among  the  inland  wheat  and  poppies — the 
savor  of  the  sea  about  him  and  its  strength." 
Harken  to  the  ancient  sea-king: 

"  Then  dire  was  their  disorder,  as  the  wavering  line  at 

first 
Swayed  to  and  fro  irresolute  ;  then    all  disrupted,  burst 

III 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

Like  waters  from  a  broken  dam  effused  upon  the  plain, 
The   shelter  of  Kilultagh's  woods  and  winding  glens  to 
gain. 

But  keen-eyed  Domnal,  when  he  stood  to  view  the  rout, 

ere  long 
Spying  that  white,   unmoving   head   amid  the  scattering 

throng, 

Exclaimed  :   '  Of  all  their  broken  host  one  only  man  I  see 
Not  flying  ;  and  I  therefore  judge  him  impotent  to  be 
Of  use  of  limb.      Go;  take  alive,'  he  cried,  'and  hither 

fetch 
The  hoary-haired  unmoving  man.   .    .   .' 

...   A  swift  battalion  went 
And,  breaking  through  the  hindmost  line,  where  Kellach 

sat  hard  by, 
Took  him  alive  ;  and,  chair  and  man  uphoisting  shoulder 

high, 
They    bore    him    back,   his   hoary    locks    and    red    eyes 

gleaming  far, 
The  grimmest  standard  yet  displayed  that  day  o'er  all  the 

war  ; 
And  grimly,   where  they  set  him  down,    he   eyed   the 

encircling  ring 
Of  Bishops  and  of  chafing  Chiefs  who  stood  about  the 

King. 
Then  with  his  crosier's  nether  end  turned  towards  him, 

Bishop  Ere 

112 


TOM    MOORE 

Said  :  '  Wretch  abhorred,  to  thee  it  is  we  owe  this  bloody 
work  ; 

By  whose  malignant  counsel  moved,  thy  hapless  nephew 
first, 

Sought  impious  aid  of  foreigners  ;  for  which  be  thou  ac- 
cursed.' " 

Surely  this  is  rank  butterwoman's  jogtrot  to 
market;  the  kind  of  thing  perhaps  that  Mr. 
J.  Hickory  Wood  and  Mr.  Arthur  Collins 
might  joyously  and  jointly  produce  for  the 
delight  of  the  babies  of  England.  But  for 
"  the  greatest  poet  Ireland  has  produced,"  for 
"  the  aged  sea-king  sitting  among  the  inland 
wheat  and  poppies  "  it  is  poor,  poor  stuff  in- 
deed. Of  course,  I  do  not  suggest  that  Sir 
Samuel  Fergusson — who  really  was  a  Scotch- 
man, and  not  a  sea-king  at  all — could  not  do 
better.  The  fact,  however,  that  "  the  great- 
est poet  Ireland  has  produced  "  managed  to 
do  so  badly,  and  was  capable  even  of  worse, 
speaks  at  any  rate  a  small  volume  for  Irish 
poetry. 

The  sole  remaining  Irish  poet  worth  troub- 
ling about  is  Aubrey  de  Vere,  and  an  exam- 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

ination  of  his  work  shows  that,  while  he 
persistently  exercised  himself  on  Irish  sub- 
jects, and  laid  himself  open  to  the  charge  of 
Irish  slackness  and  perfunctoriness,  he  could 
write  poetry  of  the  kind  which  is  entirely 
classic  in  its  derivation.  But  it  is  certain  that 
he  cannot  be  considered  to  have  belonged  to 
the  far-famed  Keltic  movement,  and  that  he 
was  miles  behind  Landor,  even  in  the  severe 
classic  vein. 

I  am  afraid  that,  broadly  speaking,  Ire- 
land has  not  produced  any  poet  of  convincing 
greatness  at  all.  The  "  Treasury  of  Irish 
Poetry  "  compared,  say,  with  such  a  collec- 
tion of  English  poetry  as  Palgrave's  "  Golden 
Treasury  "  is  a  ghastly  exhibition.  Some  of 
the  moderns  set  forward  by  the  editors  have, 
it  is  true,  accomplished  work  which  is  not 
without  a  certain  distinction;  but  the  ancients, 
Thomas  Moore  included,  are  not  for  the 
reading  of  the  discriminate.  Indeed,  Irish 
poetry  in  the  English  tongue  is  on  the  whole, 
like  Ireland  itself,  a  decidedly  tumble-down 
114 


TOM    MOORE 

affair.  In  a  sense  the  genius  of  the  country 
may  be  said  to  resemble  the  genius  of  Japan. 
That  is  to  say,  while  every  Irishman  may  be 
reckoned  something  of  a  poet  in  himself, 
there  are  no  Irish  poets;  just  as  while  the 
Japanese  are  all  poets,  none  of  them  has  man- 
aged to  evolve  a  respectable  poem.  This,  I 
cannot  help  thinking,  is  a  pity  for  Ireland, 
and  more  to  be  sorrowed  over  than  her  lack 
of  commercial  aptitude,  than  her  poverty, 
and  than  her  wrongs.  There  are  those  who 
tell  us  that  the  true  poetry  of  the  Irish  is 
hidden  away  in  the  memories  of  the  peas- 
antry, taking  the  shape  of  Gaelic  folk-songs, 
ballads,  and  so  forth.  No  doubt  much  may 
be  said  for  this  theory,  particularly  as  there 
is  a  Gaelic  League  which  seems  to  be  making 
a  good  deal  of  impression  upon  certain  sec- 
tions of  the  people.  At  the  same  time,  it 
seems  remarkable  that,  if  the  poetry  of  the 
Gael  be  so  rich,  and  ornate,  and  satisfactory 
as  those  who  are  able  to  read  it  would  have 
us  believe,  nobody  takes  the  trouble  to  put  it 

"5 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

before  us  in  a  form  calculated  to  preserve  it. 
The  Gaelic  character  is  pretty  enough,  and 
I  have  seen  odd  translations  of  Gaelic  poetry 
which  promised  rather  well  for  the  bulk.  Yet 
it  seems  more  than  doubtful  if  the  u  Druid 
Singers,"  as  I  suppose  Mr.  Yeats  would  call 
them,  ever  had  among  their  ranks  a  Homer, 
or,  for  that  matter,  an  Anacreon  or  a  Theoc- 
ritus. 

And  talking  of  the  Gaelic  League,  I  should 
like  to  note  for  the  entertainment  of  persons 
of  humor,  that  when  I  visited  its  establish- 
ment in  Dublin  some  months  back  I  found 
the  upper  portion  of  the  window  occupied  by 
a  placard,  which  announced  in  large  Roman 
letters  that  a  "  well-known  Leaguer "  was 
about  to  open  a  shop  in  Dublin — u  Object  to 
push  the  sale  of  Irish  provisions."  People 
are  human  even  in  Ireland. 


116 


CHAPTER   XIII 

W.    B.   YEATS 

IT  might  reasonably  be  supposed  that  the 
last  drop  in  Ireland's  cup  of  bitterness  was 
Mr.  William  Butler  Yeats.  An  emotional 
and  misfortunate  people  with  the  tyrant's  heel 
on  its  neck,  and  poverty  and  disaster  always 
in  attendance  upon  it,  may  be  excused  if  it 
does  not  altogether  dance  to  the  pipings  of 
a  pretty  fellow  like  Mr.  Yeats.  In  point  of 
fact,  however,  Ireland  fails  to  dance  not  be- 
cause of  her  sadness,  but  because  Mr.  Yeats's 
minstrelsy  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
utterly  alien  to  her.  In  England,  or  more 
correctly  speaking,  in  London,  it  is  true, 
there  has  been  and  possibly  is  now,  a  small 
cult  of  what  is  commonly  called  the  Keltic 
Muse.  And  the  head  and  front  of  it,  of 
course,  is  Mr.  Yeats.  He  has  found  ardent, 
117 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

if  undiscriminating,  support  among  the  Irish 
reporters  and  reviewers  on  the  daily  papers; 
he  enjoys  the  patronage  of  Mr.  Clement 
Shorter,  and  he  is  received  respectfully  at  the 
Irish  Literary  Club.  Further  I  am  told  that 
there  is  a  musically-minded  elocutionist  in 
London  who  goes  about  chanting  his  num- 
bers to  the  three-stringed  psaltery.  That 
Mr.  Yeats  is  a  poet  of  some  parts  nobody  in 
his  senses  will  attempt  to  deny.  That  he  is 
a  vast,  or  potent,  or  as  he  himself  would  no 
doubt  phrase  it,  a  Druid  poet,  I  am  not 
disposed  to  admit.  The  strength  of  him  is 
slight  indeed ;  the  thought  of  him  prattles  for- 
ever round  the  trivial.  He  has  a  still  small 
voice  with  a  wistfulness  about  it;  and  it  is 
on  this  wistfulness  that  he  has  builded  up 
his  business.  His  contemporaries,  the  men 
among  whom,  whether  he  likes  it  or  no,  he 
will  always  have  to  range,  are  every  one  of 
them  stronger  men  than  he.  They  are  ruder 
and  more  forceful,  more  gusty  and  less  at- 
tenuated, if  only  by  fits  and  starts.  They 
118 


W.    B.    YEATS 

do  their  best  to  try  to  belong  to  the  great 
British  poetical  tradition.  They  fail  lament- 
ably, but  their  work  bears  marks  of  aspira- 
tion. Mr.  Yeats,  on  the  other  hand,  has  been 
particular  to  pose  on  a  little  hill  of  his  own. 
He  imagines  that  he  has  discovered  a  sort  of 
private  tradition,  the  which  he  calls  Keltic. 
Out  of  Ireland  he  believes  himself  to  have 
captured  Druid  music,  and  this  he  has  put 
up  for  us  in  sundry  lyrical  pieces  and  sundry 
plays.  His  lyrical  pieces  are  admired  in  all 
the  drawing-rooms  and  all  the  sub-editors' 
rooms,  and  his  plays  have  been  stamped  with 
the  heartfelt  approval  of  the  Chief  Secretary 
for  Ireland,  and  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm.  The 
general  opinion  of  him  may  be  summed  up 
in  three  words — How  charmingly  Keltic !  It 
is  an  old  contention  of  mine  that  Mr.  Yeats's 
qualities  are  not  Keltic  at  all.  I  go  further 
and  say  that  as  a  fact  there  are  no  Keltic 
qualities  which  are  not  common  in  good  Eng- 
lish poetry.  The  best  Kelt  we  ever  had  was 
Mr.  Yeats's  own  master,  one  William  Blake, 
119 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

who  was  sheer  Cockney.     Mr.  Yeats  is  just 
Blake  spun  out,  and  overconscious. 

"  The  moon,  like  a  flower 
In  heaven's  high  bower, 
With  silent  delight, 
Sits  and  smiles  on  the  night." 

"  I  would  that  we  were,  my  beloved,  white  birds  on  the 

foam  of  the  sea ! 
We  tire  of  the  flame  of  the  meteor,  before  it  can  fade  and 

flee; 
And  the  flame  of  the  blue  star  of  twilight,  hung  low  on 

the  rim  of  the  sky, 
Has  awaked  in  our  hearts,  my  beloved,  a  sadness  that  may 

not  die." 

"  Sweet  babe,  in  thy  face 
Soft  desires  I  can  trace, 
Secret  joys  and  secret  smiles, 
Little  pretty  infant  wiles. 

As  thy  softest  limbs  I  feel 
Smiles  as  of  the  morning  steal 
O'er  thy  cheek,  and  o'er  thy  breast 
Where  thy  little  heart  doth  rest." 

««  I  told  my  love,  I  told  my  love, 
I  told  her  all  my  heart, 
120 


W.    B.    YEATS 

Trembling,  cold,  in  ghastly  fears. 
Ah,  she  did  depart  ! 

Soon  after  she  was  gone  from  me, 

A  traveler  came  by, 
Silently,  invisibly  : 

He  took  her  with  a  sigh." 

"  Beloved,  gaze  in  thine  own  heart, 

The  holy  tree  is  growing  there  ; 
From  joy  the  holy  branches  start, 

And  all  the  trembling  flowers  they  bear. 
The  changing  colors  of  its  fruit 

Have  dowered  the  stars  with  merry  light ; 
The  surety  of  its  hidden  root 

Has  planted  quiet  in  the  night." 

Which  is  Blake,  and  which  is  Yeats  ?  You 
may  put  the  name  of  either  under  any  of 
these  stanzas,  without  being  guilty  of  an  un- 
pardonable critical  lapse.  Mr.  Yeats  took 
Blake  and  imitated  him  as  frankly,  and  it 
may  be,  as  unconsciously,  as  many  less  sophis- 
ticated versifiers  have  imitated  Tennyson,  or 
Mr.  Swinburne,  or  Rossetti.  It  is  creditable 
to  him  that  he  should  have  had  discernment 
enough  to  perceive  in  Blake  an  exceptional 
9  121 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

and  individual  content;  but  why  having  got 
hold  of  that  content,  having  saturated  him- 
self with  it,  as  it  were,  and  having  found  the 
exploitation  of  it  easy  and  provocative  of 
praise,  Mr.  Yeats  should  turn  round  and  call 
it  Keltic  is  something  of  a  puzzle.  Of  course, 
one  has  to  remember  that  among  a  people 
whose  interests  are  material,  rather  than  spir- 
itual, the  poet  who  would  get  a  hearing  is 
compelled  to  have  resort  to  a  certain  amount 
of  adventitiousness  and  empyricism. 

"  We  poets  in  our  youth  begin  in  gladness  ; 

But  thereof  come  in  the  end  despondency  and  madness," 

saith  Wordsworth.  We  poets  in  our  youth 
also  begin  in  sincerity  and  with  a  single  eye  to 
the  glory  of  the  Muses.  But  too  frequently, 
even  while  our  youth  is  still  with  us,  we  begin 
to  think  about  the  glory  of  ourselves,  and 
take  steps  accordingly.  It  is  good  for  us,  if 
we  have  any  gift  at  all,  to  organize  and  adver- 
tise a  school,  with  ourselves  carefully  elected 
by  ourselves  to  the  position  of  archpriest. 
122 


W.    B.    YEATS 

The  critic  who  in  an  idle  hour  set  down 
"  Cockney  School,"  has  a  great  deal  to  an- 
swer for.  Somebody  followed  him  hard  with 
the  "  Lake  School."  And  in  due  course  we 
had  the  "  Fleshly  School."  It  is  to  be  noted, 
however,  that  these  epithets  were  bestowed 
by  the  critics  upon  the  poets,  and  not  by  the 
poets  upon  the  poets  themselves.  I  venture 
to  suggest  that  it  has  been  slightly  different 
in  the  case  of  Mr.  Yeats  and  his  following. 
In  Mr.  Yeats's  mind — perhaps  without  his 
being  wholly  alive  to  it — something  like  the 
following  has  taken  place :  "  To  be  of  any 
account  in  this  world  a  poet  must  have  a 
quality  or  cry  of  his  own.  There  is  a  quality, 
or  poignancy  of  individualism,  about  Blake 
which  has  not  yet  become  obvious  to  the  mul- 
titude. I  admire  it,  and  I  can  imitate  it,  and 
possibly  improve  upon  it;  therefore  let  me 
adopt  it  for  my  own.  And  as  I  am  an  Irish- 
man I  shall  cause  it  to  be  known  not  as  the 
spirit  of  Blake,  but  as  the  Keltic  quality. 
Selah !  "  I  do  not  suggest  for  a  moment  that 
123 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

Mr.  Yeats's  conduct  in  this  matter  has  been 
either  wicked  or  unjustifiable.  I  do  not  even 
suggest  that  Mr.  Yeats  has  been  quite  aware 
of  what  he  was  doing;  but  not  to  put  too 
fine  a  point  upon  it,  I  do  say  that  he  has  been 
"  modern,"  and  that  it  is  a  thousand  pities. 
There  is  nothing  in  Ireland,  and  there  never 
has  been  anything  in  Ireland  which  will  jus- 
tify the  appropriation  of  Blake  as  a  sort  of 
exclusive  Irish  product;  and  Mr.  Yeats  has 
written  nothing  which  he  could  not  have 
written  just  as  well  had  he  been  a  Cockney, 
or  a  Hebrew,  capable  of  appreciating  the 
spiritual  and  technical  parts  of  Blake,  and  of 
perceiving  the  beauty  of  certain  scraps  of 
Irish  history  and  folk-lore.  As  an  Irish  poet, 
Mr.  Yeats,  in  my  opinion,  fails  completely. 
It  is  as  reasonable  to  call  him  an  Irish  poet 
as  it  would  be  to  call  Milton  a  Hebrew  poet 
because  he  wrote  "  Paradise  Lost,"  or  Mr. 
Swinburne  a  Greek  poet  because  he  wrote 
"  Atalanta."  There  is  not  an  Irishman,  qua 
Irishman,  who  wants  Mr.  Yeats;  any  more 
124 


W.    B.    YEATS 

than  there  is  an  Irishman,  qua  Irishman,  who 
wants  Mr.  Yeats's  Irish  Literary  Theater. 
Mr.  Yeats's  poetry  and  Mr.  Yeats's  Irish 
Literary  Theater  are  Blake's  poetry  and 
Blake's  Literary  Theater.  They  belong  to 
the  Euston  Road,  and  not  to  Tara;  they  are 
cultivated,  wary,  wistful,  minor  English,  and 
not  Irish  at  all.  You  have  to  be  English, 
and  a  trifle  subtle  at  that,  to  get  on  with 
them.  Blake's  laurels  are  very  posthumous 
and  recent  because  the  Englishmen  of  his 
time  were  busy  with  Pope  and  Crabbe,  and 
had  a  sort  of  suspicion  that  Wordsworth  was 
a  lunatic.  Englishmen  did  not  know  even 
Shakespeare  in  those  days;  at  any  rate  not  in 
the  way  that  we  know  him  nowadays.  To 
the  Pope-suckled  Englishman  of  culture, 
Shakespeare,  if  he  was  anything  at  all,  was 
a  sort  of  robustious  and  flowery  dramatist. 
They  played  him  in  full-bottomed  wigs  and 
small  clothes.  To-day  the  tendencies  are  all 
the  other  way.  Shakespeare  we  shall  tell  you 
was  no  playwright,  but  a  poet,  and  the  big- 
125 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

gest  of  them.  Our  modern  actors  spoil  him 
for  us,  not  by  their  cuts  and  modifications, 
but  by  their  raree-shows  and  mouthings. 
Who  of  them  can  say  for  you  to  your  soul's 
satisfaction : 

"O  here, 

Will  I  set  up  my  everlasting  rest 
And  shake  the  yoke  of  inauspicious  stars 
From  this  world-weary  flesh  ?  " 

Shakespeare  is  for  all  time  and  more  and 
more  for  the  closet.  Blake  is  a  greater  poet 
than  the  critical  are  disposed  to  admit,  even 
in  this  age  of  tender  enthusiasms.  And  Mr. 
Yeats  is  a  poet,  not  because  he  is  Irish  or 
Keltic,  but  in  so  far  and  precisely  as  far  as 
he  has  had  the  good  sense  to  take  Blake  for 
his  master.  For  Kelticism  as  it  is  understood 
by  its  professors,  Shakespeare  abounds  in  it. 

1st  Lady.  Come,  my  gracious  lord, 

Shall  I  be  your  playfellow  ? 
Mam.  No,  I'll  none  of  you. 

jst  Lady.  Why,  my  sweet  lord  ? 

126 


W.    B.    YEATS 

Mam.  You'll  kiss  me  hard,  and  speak  to  me  as  if 

I  were  a  baby  still. — I  love  you  better. 
2nd  Lady.     And  why  so,  my  lord  ? 
Mam.  Not  for  because 

Your  brows  are  blacker  ;  yet  black  brows,  they 
say, 

Become  some  women  best,  so  that  there  be  not 

Too  much  hair  there,  but  in  a  semi-circle 

Or  half- moon  made  with  a  pen. 
2nd  Lady.  Who  taught  you  this  ? 

Mam.    I  learnt  it  out  of  women's  faces. — Pray  now 

What  color  are  your  eyebrows  ? 
1st  Lady.  Blue,  my  lord. 

Mam.    Nay,  there's  a  mock.      I  have  seen  a  lady's  nose 

That  has  been  blue,  but  not  her  eyebrows. 
2nd  Lady.  Hark  ye  ; 

The  queen  your  mother  rounds  apace  ;  we  shall 

Present  our  service  to  a  fine  new  prince 

One  of  these  days  ;  and  then  you'd  wanton  with 
us, 

If  we  would  have  you. 
///  Lady.  She  is  spread  of  late 

Into  a  goodly  bulk.      Good  time  encounter  her  ! 
Her.      What  wisdom  stirs  amongst  you  ? — Come,   sir, 
now 

I  am  for  you  again.      Pray  you,  sit  by  us, 

And  tell' 8  a  tale. 

Mam.  Merry  or  sad  shall' t  be  ? 

127 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

Her.      As  merry  as  you  will. 

Mam.  A  sad  tale's  best  for  winter  : 

I  have  one  of  sprites  and  goblins. 
Her.  Let's  have  that,  good  sir, 

Come   on,  sit  down.      Come   on,   and  do  your 
best, 

To  fright  me  with  your  sprites,   you're  powerful 

at  it. 

Mam.    There  was  a  man — 

Her.  Nay,  come  sit  down  ;  then  on. 

Mam.    Dwelt  by  a  churchyard — I  will  tell  it  softly  ; 

Yond  crickets  shall  not  hear  it. 
Her.  Come  on  then, 

And  give't  in  mine  ear. 

There  is  enough  Keltic  quality  here,  surely, 
to  satisfy  both  Mr.  Yeats  and  Mr.  Shorter. 
In  fine,  this  tiny  episode  out  of  A  Winter's 
Tale  is  quite  as  good,  and  quite  as  Keltic, 
as  anything  the  Blake  School,  to  give  it  its 
honest  title,  has  managed  hitherto  to  produce. 
What  the  average  Irishman  would  think 
about  it  is  another  story.  It  is  a  pity  to  take 
from  Ireland  even  a  trifle  over  which  she 
might,  not  improperly,  plume  herself.  But 
Mr.  Yeats  in  the  figure  of  Irish  poet  reminds 
128 


W.    B.    YEATS 

us  of  nothing  so  much  as  a  peacock  butterfly 
purchased  in  the  chrysalis  state  out  of  France 
by  the  careful  entomologist,  hidden  in  a 
plant-pot  at  his  parlor  window,  and  slaugh- 
tered and  labeled  British  so  soon  as  it  has 
had  time  to  spread  its  wistful  wings. 


129 


CHAPTER    XIV 

WIT  AND    HUMOR 

IT  has  been  remarked  by  a  certain  hawker 
of  platitudes  that  humor  is  that  which  makes 
a  man  laugh.  There  have  been  several  defi- 
nitions of  wit,  one  of  them  by  Sydney  Smith, 
and  all  of  them  more  or  less  wanting  in  com- 
pleteness. But  in  a  general  way  nobody  is 
particularly  keen  on  definitions,  provided  they 
can  get  for  their  amusement  and  exhilaration 
either  humor  or  wit.  During  the  past  few 
decades  we  have  heard  a  vast  deal  of  the  ad- 
vantages which  accrue  from  the  possession  of 
what  is  called  a  sense  of  humor.  This  espe- 
cial sense  or  faculty  for  appreciating  a  joke 
is  nowadays  cultivated,  and  consciously  cul- 
tivated, by  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  people. 
The  gravest  and  most  reverend  persons  are 
wont  to  enliven  their  conversation  or  their 
130 


WIT   AND    HUMOR 

discourse  with  quips,  cranks,  gibes,  and  other 
sallies,  ingeniously  calculated  to  set  the  list- 
ener in  a  roar.  The  House  of  Commons  has 
latterly  appeared  to  be  filled  with  gentlemen 
who  live  to  amuse  each  other;  there  are 
judges  who  seem  almost  incapable  of  open- 
ing their  mouths  without  attempting  the 
hilarious,  and  even  bishops  and  bankers  must 
have  their  little  joke.  The  press  also  strains 
after  humorsomeness  in  every  degree,  and 
when  critics  wish  to  be  particularly  severe 
they  write  simply,  "  Mr.  So-and-So  has  no 
sense  of  humor."  And  here,  in  effect,  we 
have  what  I  conceive  to  be  another  distinct 
injustice  to  Ireland.  For  Irish  wit  and  hu- 
mor have  passed  into  a  tradition,  and  are 
believed  by  good  judges  to  be  the  very  wit- 
tiest and  most  humorous  wit  and  humor  the 
gods  are  likely  to  vouchsafe  to  us.  In  the 
course  of  years  many  fairly  thick  volumes 
have  been  compiled  out  of  the  abundance  of 
humorous  material  Ireland  has  furnished 
forth.  To  turn  to  such  a  volume,  however, 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

is  in  my  opinion  to  experience  a  certain  dis- 
appointment. There  are  jokes,  it  is  true,  and 
jokes  innumerable;  but  somehow  for  the 
modern  laughter  seeker  there  is  a  distinct  flat- 
ness about  them.  Furthermore,  they  are 
nearly  all  "  chestnuts,"  a  fact  which  renders 
it  pretty  plain  that  the  people  of  Ireland  have 
come  to  a  full  stop  as  it  were,  and  ceased  to 
produce  them.  I  subjoin  a  few  examples 
culled  hap-hazard  from  a  book  published  so 
recently  as  last  year: 

A  prisoner  was  trying  to  explain  to  a  judge 
and  jury  his  innocence  of  a  certain  crime. 
"  It's  not  meself,"  he  cried,  "  as'll  be  afther 
thrying  to  desave  yer  honors.  I  didn't  hit 
the  poor  dead  gintleman  at  all,  at  all.  It  was 
him  that  sthruck  the  blow,  and  the  exartion 
killed  him,  and,  what's  more,  I  wasn't  there 
at  the  time."  "  I  perceive,"  observed  the 
judge,  "  you  are  trying  to  prove  an  alibi." 
"  An  al-loi-boi !  "  exclaimed  the  prisoner,  evi- 
dently pleased  at  the  big  word  being  sug- 
132 


WIT   AND    HUMOR 

gested  to  strengthen  his  defense.  "  Yes," 
said  the  judge.  "  Can  you  tell  me  what  is 
a  good  alibi?  "  "  Faith,  yer  honor,"  replied 
the  prisoner,  "  and  it's  a  loi  boi  which  the 
prisoner  gets  off." 

"  What  passed  between  yourself  and  the 
complainant?  "  inquired  the  magistrate  in  a 
county  court.  "  I  think,  sor,"  replied  the 
worthy  O'Brien,  "  a  half-dozen  bricks  and  a 
lump  of  paving-stone." 

"  I  say,  Paddy,"  said  a  tourist  to  his  car- 
driver,  "  that  is  the  worst-looking  horse  you 
drive  I  ever  saw.  Why  don't  you  fatten  him 
up?"  "Fat  him  up,  is  it?"  queried  the 
Jehu,  "  faix,  the  poor  baste  can  hardly  carry 
the  little  mate  that's  on  him  now  I  " 

"  Have  you  had  any  experience  with  chil- 
dren? "  inquired  a  lady  of  a  prospective  nurse. 
"  Oh,  yes,  mum,"  replied  the  woman,  bland- 
ly. "  Oi  used  to  be  a  child  mesilf  wanst." 

133 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

A  jarvey,  who  was  driving  through  the 
streets  of  Dublin,  met  with  an  obstruction  in 
the  shape  of  a  man  riding  a  donkey.  "  Now 
then,  you  two!  "  he  exclaimed. 

An  Irish  member,  named  Dogherty,  who 
subsequently  became  Chief-Justice  of  Ireland, 
asked  Canning  what  he  thought  of  his  maiden 
speech.  "  The  only  fault  I  can  find  with  it," 
said  Canning,  "  is  that  you  called  the  Speaker 
sir,  too  often."  "  My  dear  fellow,"  replied 
Dogherty,  "  if  you  knew  the  mental  state  I 
was  in  while  speaking,  you  would  not  wonder 
if  I  had  called  him  ma'am." 

"  Get  on,  man ;  get  on !  "  said  a  traveler 
to  his  car-driver.  "Wake  up  your  nag!" 
"  Shure,  sor,"  was  the  reply,  "  I  haven't  the 
heart  to  bate  him."  "  What's  the  matter 
with  him?"  inquired  the  traveler;  "is  he 
sick?"  "No,  sor,"  answered  the  jarvey, 
"  he's  not  sick,  but  it's  unlucky  he  is,  sor,  un- 
lucky! You  see,  sor,  every  morning,  before 

134 


WIT   AND    HUMOR 

I  put  him  i'  the  car,  I  tosses  him  whether  he'll 
have  a  feed  of  oats  or  I'll  have  a  dhrink  of 
whisky,  an'  the  poor  baste  has  lost  five  morn- 
ings running!  " 

"  Did  you  notice  no  suspicious  character 
about  the  neighborhood?  "  said  a  magistrate 
to  an  inexperienced  policeman.  "  Shure,  yer 
hanner,"  replied  the  policeman,  "  I  saw  but 
one  man,  an'  I  asked  him  what  he  was  doing 
there  at  that  time  o'  night?  Sez  he,  '  I  have 
no  business  here  just  now,  but  I  expect  to 
open  a  jewelry  sthore  in  the  vicinity  later  on.' 
At  that  I  sez,  '  I  wish  you  success,  sor.' ' 
"  Yes,"  said  the  magistrate,  "  and  he  did  open 
a  jewelry  store  in  the  vicinity  later  on,  and 
stole  seventeen  watches."  "  Begorra,  yer 
hanner,"  answered  the  constable  after  a  pause, 
"  the  man  may  have  been  a  thafe,  but  he  was 
no  liar!" 

"  Bridget,    I    don't   think   it   is   quite   the 
thing  for  you  to  entertain  company  in  the 

135 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

kitchen."  "  Don't  ye  worry,  mum.  Shure, 
an'  oi  wouldn't  be  afther  deprivin'  ye  o'  th' 
parler." 

An  old  lady  in  Dublin,  weighing  about  six- 
teen stone,  engaged  a  car-driver  to  convey 
her  to  a  North  Wall  steamer.  Arrived  there, 
she  handed  the  driver  his  legal  fare — six- 
pence. Gazing  disconsolately  at  the  coin  in 
his  hand,  and  then  at  the  fat  old  lady,  he  ex- 
claimed as  he  turned  away — "  I'll  lave  ye 
to  the  Almoighty,  ma'am !  " 

"  Prisoner,"  demanded  a  magistrate  of  a 
man  charged  with  begging,  "  have  you  any 
visible  means  of  support?  "  "  Yes,  yer  hon- 
or," replied  the  prisoner,  and  then  turning 
to  his  wife  who  was  in  court,  he  said,  "  Brid- 
get, stand  up,  so  that  the  coort  can  see  yez !  " 

Now  it  is  plain  that  we  have  here  a  fairly 
representative  selection  of  the  kind  of  wit 
and  humor  that  is  supposed  to  come  to  us 
136 


WIT   AND    HUMOR 

out  of  Ireland.  Some  of  it  no  doubt  is  rea- 
sonably good,  some  of  it  is  quite  mild.  Pos- 
sibly it  is  amusing,  and  calculated  to  tickle 
old-fashioned  people.  Yet  one  has  distinct 
qualms  about  it  when  one  considers  it  as  a 
means  for  provoking  the  laughter  of  the 
twentieth-century  person.  The  fact  is  that 
humor  has  been  made  so  much  of  a  cult  in 
the  modern  mind  that  it  has  to  be  very  hu- 
morous indeed,  not  to  say  a  trifle  subtle,  if 
it  is  to  raise  a  smile.  And  in  considering  the 
examples  quoted,  we  are  faced  with  a  further 
difficulty.  Are  these  anecdotes  of  unquestion- 
able Irish  extraction?  I  am  afraid  not. 
Their  authenticity  is  impeachable.  Mutatis 
mutandis,  they  have  been  told  of  Cockneys 
and  Yorkshire  men,  and  Somersetshire  men, 
and  even  of  Scotchmen.  Furthermore,  there 
is  nothing  in  them  that  can  be  considered  pe- 
culiarly and  exclusively  Irish,  or  indicative  of 
the  Irish  temperament  and  character  as  it 
exists  to-day.  Your  modern  Irishman,  as  I 
have  pointed  out,  is  a  dreary  and  melancholy 
10  137 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

wight.  Laughter  and  sprightliness  have  died 
out  of  him,  and  whether  in  thought  or  word 
he  is  about  as  dull  and  plantigrade  as  even 
a  sad  man  can  well  be.  The  eminent  people 
who  stand  for  Ireland  in  this  country  are  all 
of  them  afflicted  with  a  similar  lack  of  cheer- 
fulness. Rouse  them,  and  they  can  be  as  bit- 
ter and  vituperative  and  aboriginal  as  any 
Scotchman  of  them  all;  but  their  ordinary 
habit  is  sad,  uncertain,  and  inept,  and  they  do 
not  know  how  to  laugh.  Here  and  there  one 
of  them  at  the  Bar,  or  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, or  at  a  greasy  journalistic  banquet,  does 
his  feeble  best  to  keep  up  the  Irish  tradition 
for  smartness  and  wittiness  of  remark.  But 
the  attempt  is  invariably  a  failure,  because 
at  the  back  of  it  there  is  no  real  brain  and 
no  real  flow  of  spirits.  One  of  the  biggest 
bullies  at  the  Bar  is  a  beefy  Irishman  who 
esteems  himself  a  great  humorist.  I  have 
heard  him  fire  off  twenty  or  thirty  idiotic 
jokes  in  the  course  of  half  an  hour  or  so,  and 
always  does  he  snigger  at  the  beginning  of 
138 


WIT   AND    HUMOR 

his  precious  gibe;  always  does  he  snigger  in 
the  middle;  always  does  he  make  pretense 
of  becoming  apoplectic  with  chortle  at  the 
end.  The  circumstance  that  people  laugh  at 
him  and  not  with  him,  does  not  appear  to 
occur  to  his  small,  if  legal,  mind.  His  dear- 
est friends  call  him  "  the  sniggerer,"  and  it 
is  said  that  he  is  in  the  habit  of  retiring  to 
his  chambers  of  afternoons  for  the  purpose 
of  having  a  protracted  fit  of  giggling. 
Primed  with  four  or  five  glasses  of  cheap 
port,  his  capacity  for  low  comedy  becomes 
so  evident  that  one  trembles  lest  some  en- 
terprising theatrical  manager  should  offer 
him  the  Leno-Welch  part  in  next  year's 
"  Little  Goody  Two-shoes."  Another  "  wit- 
ty "  Irishman,  who  shall  be  nameless,  came 
to  these  shores  with  a  fair  array  of  good  gifts 
at  his  disposal.  Knowing  himself  for  an 
Irishman,  and  having  faith  in  the  Irish  tra- 
dition, he  forthwith  set  up  in  business  as  a 
posturing  clown  and  professional  grinner 
through  horse-collars,  with  the  result  that 
139 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

his  genius  is  altogether  obscured.  Irishmen 
of  all  degrees  will  do  better  if  they  endeavor 
to  remember  that  they  have  really  no  sense 
of  humor  left.  The  only  one  of  them  who 
has  made  anything  like  a  satisfactory  repu- 
tation in  London,  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats  to  wit, 
has  helped  himself  to  it  by  being  as  devoid 
of  humor  as  a  bone-yard.  Mr.  Yeats  has 
never  been  known  publicly  to  try  his  hand 
at  the  very  smallest  joke.  The  sobriety  of 
the  hearse  is  his,  and  much  good  sense  also. 
For  the  eminent  Irish,  as  we  know  them 
among  us,  are  by  nature  neither  witty  nor 
humorous;  and  those  who  try  to  be  so,  suc- 
ceed in  being  only  fatuous  and  vulgar.  Some- 
body has  said  cuttingly  that  a  Frenchman 
consists  of  equal  parts  of  tiger  and  monkey. 
Of  certain  of  the  eminent  Irish  in  London  it 
may  be  said  that  they  are  half  jackal  and  half 
performing  dog;  for  they  are  at  once  hungry 
and  fantastic. 


140 


CHAPTER   XV 

MORE   WIT   AND    HUMOR 

THE  real  truth  about  Irish  humor  as  a 
thing  to  itself  and  apart  is  that  it  is  based 
either  on  ignorance  or  on  a  certain  slowness 
of  mind.  The  Dublin  car  driver  who  on 
being  told  by  a  constable  that  his  name  was 
obliterated  from  his  car  replied,  "  Arrah,  me 
name's  not  Obliterated,  it's  O'Grady,"  no 
doubt  achieved  what  will  pass  among  the 
average  for  humor.  All  the  same,  he  did 
not  know  that  he  was  saying  anything  good, 
and  his  mot,  if  mot  one  may  call  it,  was  the 
direct  outcome  of  a  profound  ignorance  of 
the  English  language.  The  books  of  Irish 
humor  abound  with  instances  of  this  form 
of  humorsomeness :  "  You  are  not  opaque,  are 
you?"  sarcastically  asked  one  Irishman  of 
another  who  was  standing  in  front  of  him 
141 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

at  the  theater.  "  Indeed  I'm  not,"  replied 
the  other,  "  it's  O'Brien  that  I  am."  Clearly 
one  might  manufacture  this  kind  of  humor 
ad  infinitum.  The  Chinese  are  said  to  con- 
sider it  a  great  joke  if  a  man  should  fall  down 
and  break  his  arm,  and  I  have  seen  Eng- 
lishmen laughing  at  a  man  who  has  been 
unfortunate  enough  to  have  his  hat  blown 
off  in  a  high  wind.  But  the  Irish  do  not 
laugh  at  these  things.  Even  the  native  bull, 
of  which  they  are  so  proud,  fails  to  tickle 
them.  The  Irishman  says  his  bull  solemnly 
and  unconsciously,  and  the  Englishman  does 
the  laughing.  In  essence  the  Irish  bull  is 
really  a  blunder.  Nuttall,  with  his  usual 
charming  frankness,  defines  a  bull  as  "  a  ludi- 
crous inconsistency,  or  blunder  in  speech." 
Children  and  Irishmen  are  always  making 
them:  "If  it  please  the  coort,"  quoth  an 
Irish  attorney,  "  if  I  am  wrong  in  this,  I 
have  another  pint  which  is  equally  conclu- 
sive." An  Irish  reporter,  giving  an  account 
of  a  burglary,  remarked :  "  After  a  fruitless 
142 


MORE    WIT   AND    HUMOR 

search,  all  the  money  was  recovered,  except 
one  pair  of  boots!"  A  Dublin  clerk  on 
being  asked  why  he  was  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  late  at  the  office,  made  answer:  "  The 
tram-car  I  came  by  was  full,  so  I  had  to 
walk."  "  This  is  the  seventh  night  you've 
come  home  in  the  morning,"  observed  an 
Irish  lady  to  her  spouse,  "  the  next  time  you 
go  out,  you'll  stay  at  home  and  open  the 
door  for  yourself."  The  following  adver- 
tisement is  said  to  have  appeared  in  a  Dub- 
lin newspaper:  "Whereas  John  Hall  has 
fraudulently  taken  away  several  articles  of 
wearing  apparel,  without  my  knowledge,  this 
is  to  inform  him  that  if  he  does  not  forthwith 
return  the  same  his  name  shall  be  made  pub- 
lic." An  Irishman  who  accidentally  came 
across  another  Irishman  who  had  failed  to 
meet  him  after  a  challenge  addressed  him  in 
these  words :  "  Well,  sir,  I  met  you  this 
morning  and  you  did  not  turn  up;  how- 
ever I  am  determined  to  meet  you  to- 
morrow morning,  whether  you  come  or  not." 
143 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

"  Dhrunk!  "  said  a  man,  speaking  of  his 
neighbor,  "  he  was  that  dhrunk  that  he  made 
ten  halves  of  ivry  word."  A  man  who  was 
employed  as  a  hod-carrier  was  told  that  he 
must  always  carry  up  fourteen  bricks  in  his 
hod.  One  morning  the  supply  of  bricks  ran 
short,  and  the  man  could  find  but  thirteen 
to  put  in  his  hod.  In  answer  to  a  loud  yell 
from  the  street  one  of  the  masons  on  top 
of  the  scaffolding  called  out :  "  What  do  you 
want?"  "  T'row  me  down  wan  brick," 
bawled  Pat,  pointing  to  his  hod,  "  to  make 
me  number  good." 

Of  course,  the  great  and  abiding  glory  of 
Ireland  in  the  way  of  bull-makers  was  the 
never-to-be-forgotten  Sir  Boyle  Roche.  This 
worthy  knight  once  charged  a  political  op- 
ponent with  being  "  an  enemy  to  both  king- 
doms who  wishes  to  diminish  the  brotherly 
affection  of  the  two  sister  countries."  He 
also  said  that  "  a  man  differs  from  a  bird 
in  not  being  able  to  be  in  two  places  at 
once,"  and  that  "  the  Irish  people  were  living 
144 


MORE   WIT   AND    HUMOR 

from  hand  to  mouth,  like  the  birds  of  the 
air."  A  petition  of  the  citizens  of  Belfast 
in  favor  of  Catholic  emancipation  he  stigma- 
tized as  "an  airy  fabric  based  upon  a  sandy 
foundation,"  and  he  expressed  his  willingness 
"  to  give  up,  not  only  a  part,  but,  if  necessary, 
even  the  whole  of  our  constitution  to  pre- 
serve the  remainder."  In  one  of  his  most 
famous  speeches  there  occurs  the  appended 
passage:  "Mr.  Speaker,  if  we  once  per- 
mitted the  villainous  French  Masons  to  med- 
dle with  the  buttresses  and  walls  of  our 
ancient  constitution,  they  would  never  stop, 
nor  stay,  sir,  until  they  brought  the  founda- 
tion stones  tumbling  down  about  the  ears 
of  the  nation.  If  these  Galilean  villains 
should  invade  us,  'tis  on  that  table  maybe 
those  honorable  members  might  see  their  own 
destinies  lying  in  heaps  atop  of  one  another. 
Here,  perhaps,  sir,  the  murderous  crew  would 
break  in  and  cut  us  to  pieces,  and  throw  our 
bleeding  heads  upon  that  table  to  stare  us 
in  the  face." 

145 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

"  Is  your  father  alive  yet?  "  inquired  one 
O'Brien  of  one  M'Gorry.  "No,"  replied 
M'Gorry  solemnly,  "not  yet!"  A  beggar 
called  at  a  house  and  said:  "For  the  love 
of  hiven,  ma'am,  give  me  a  crust  of  bread, 
for  I'm  so  thirsty  I  don't  know  where  I'll 
sleep  to-night."  All  of  which  is  very  funny 
and  as  who  should  say,  very  quaint.  But  is 
it  humor?  It  provokes  a  smile  certainly,  yet 
it  points  to  simplicity,  rather  than  subtilty, 
in  the  Irish  character.  Indeed,  the  absolute 
truth  about  the  bull  is  that  it  is  the  child 
of  a  plentiful  lack  of  wit.  A  nice  derange- 
ment of  epitaphs,  an  opening  of  one's  mouth 
and  a  putting  of  one's  foot  in  it,  may  pro- 
voke mirth  in  other  people,  but  it  does  not 
prove  one  to  be  either  witty  or  merry.  It 
is  satisfactory  to  know  that,  according  to 
the  latest  observations,  the  fine  art  of  bull- 
making  is  going  out  of  fashion  among  Irish- 
men. The  Irish  were  the  inventors  of  the 
bull,  they  brought  it  to  its  greatest  perfec- 
tion, they  made  it  redound  to  their  credit 
146 


MORE   WIT   AND    HUMOR 

as  a  witty  nation;  and  one  cannot  deny  their 
right  to  cease  from  its  manufacture  if  they 
see  fit.  In  the  House  of  Commons  a  bull 
is  nowadays  seldom  perpetrated,  whether 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  at  any  rate  by 
the  Irish  Party.  Irish  Members  of  Parlia- 
ment have  grown  too  wary  to  be  caught  bull- 
ing. They  walk  delicately  in  English-cut 
frock-coats;  they  rather  pride  themselves  on 
their  ability  to  keep  down  the  brogue,  and 
at  the  bare  mention  of  the  word  "  bull," 
they  are  prone  to  shiver. 

There  is  one  feature  of  Irish  wit  and  hu- 
mor which  is  worthy  of  admiration  and  imi- 
tation. It  is  a  negative  feature  truly,  but  an 
excellent  one.  Irishmen  do  not  seem  capable 
of  that  last  infirmary  of  the  doting  mind — 
the  pun.  To  play  effectively  upon  words  is, 
of  course,  an  art  in  itself,  and  kept  within 
bounds  it  is  an  amusing  art;  but  the  man  who 
drops  out  of  art  into  sheer  mechanism,  which 
is  what  has  happened  to  the  average  punster, 
cannot  be  considered  worthy  of  the  respect 

147 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

of  his  fellows.  The  Irish,  as  I  have  said, 
do  not  appear  to  have  descended  to  these 
depths.  They  may  be  a  worn-out,  a  weary, 
a  dull-witted,  an  exhausted,  and  a  brooding 
and  melancholy  people,  but  they  are  not  pun- 
sters. Herein  they  have  a  distinct  advantage 
over  the  English,  among  whom  the  pun  ap- 
pears to  obtain  wider  and  wider  currency. 
It  is  a  lamentable  fact  that  there  are  judges 
on  the  English  Bench  who  never  let  slip  an 
opportunity  for  punning.  It  makes  juries 
and  the  gallery  guffaw,  and  it  gets  a  judge  the 
reputation  of  being  a  wit  and  the  possessor 
of  those  minor  literary  graces  which  are  sup- 
posed to  be  included  in  the  judicial  preroga- 
tive. Judges  are  commonly  understood  to 
be  irremovable,  but  I  think  that  after  their 
third  pun  retirement  should  be  the  only 
course  for  them.  The  man  who  makes  a 
pun  insults  the  intellect  of  his  auditors  and 
commits  a  gross  outrage  upon  the  language. 
Let  all  punsters,  whether  in  high  or  low 
places,  take  heed  that  they  are  vulgar  and 
148 


MORE   WIT   AND    HUMOR 

vicious  persons,  and  neither  witty  nor  wise. 
A  thousand  honest  bulls  are  less  to  be  depre- 
cated than  the  weeniest  pun  that  was  ever  let 
loose. 

Before  leaving  this  part  of  our  subject  it 
is  perhaps  desirable  that  we  should  remem- 
ber that  two  of  the  very  wittiest  men  of  our 
own  time  have  come  to  us  from  Ireland. 
One  of  them  was  the  late  Mr.  Oscar  Wilde 
and  the  other  is  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw. 
Of  Oscar  Wilde,  excepting  that  in  his  prime 
he  was  a  wit  of  the  first  water,  I  shall  say 
nothing.  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw,  how- 
ever, is  another  story.  As  a  reformer  and  a 
serious  writer  I  make  small  account  of  him. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  a  wit,  he  is  a  portent. 
He  has  been  an  unconscionable  time  coming 
into  his  own,  but  in  America,  at  any  rate, 
people  are  beginning,  by  childlike,  dim  de- 
grees, to  perceive  that  he  has  brilliance.  If 
he  had  published  the  substance  of  his  printed 
work  in  any  other  form  but  that  of  plays, 
he  might  have  been  a  recognized  and  prosper- 
149 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

ous  humorist  long  ago.  The  people  who 
supply  the  wit  and  humor  of  the  day  may 
be  set  down,  without  injustice,  for  a  sorry 
and  indifferent  company.  Burnand,  Payne, 
Emanuel,  Jerome,  Lucas,  Sims,  Hickory 
Wood,  and  Barrie — these  are  some  of  the 
names  of  them.  And  what  do  they  stand 
for?  Parts  of  Punch,  Eliza,  Three  Men 
in  a  Boat,  The  Inside  Completuar  Britannia- 
ware  (O  blood  and  knives!),  Mustard  and 
Cress,  or,  The  Fat  Man's  Sabbath  Morning, 
The  White  Cat,  or,  Cooper's  Entire,  Peter 
Pan,  or,  The  Old  Man's  Creche.  Heaven 
save  us  and  keep  us  from  wishing  that  this 
squad  of  awkward  witlings  had  never  been 
born!  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw  in  his 
sole  person,  and  Irishman  though  he  be,  is 
worth  a  wilderness  of  them.  Some  day  we 
shall  find  it  out,  and  in  that  good  hour  Ire- 
land will  be  able  to  boast  that  one  of  her 
sons  was  nearly  as  great,  nearly  as  humorous, 
and  nearly  as  popular  as,  say,  Mr.  Mark 
Twain. 

150 


CHAPTER   XVI 

DIRT 

I  SUPPOSE  that  next  to  the  Scotch,  the  Irish 
are  out  and  out  the  dirtiest  people  on  the 
earth.  But  whereas  Scotch  dirt  is  a  crude 
and  gross  affair,  Irish  dirt  has  still  a  pathetic 
and  almost  tender  grace  about  it.  "  Dear, 
dirty  Dublin "  sigh  the  emotional  in  such 
matters — though  you  never  catch  anybody 
shedding  a  tear  for  remembrance  of  dear, 
filthy  Glasgow.  Dublin  is  indubitably  a  dirty 
city,  just  as  Ireland  is  a  dirty  country,  and 
for  Irishmen,  at  any  rate,  the  Government 
is  a  dirty  Government.  And  it  is  not  because 
Dublin  or  Ireland  is  dirty  of  necessity,  or  in 
the  way  that  the  Black  Country  or  the  East 
End  of  London  are  dirty.  Not  a  bit  of  it: 
Dublin  and  Ireland  are  dirty  simply  and  sole- 
ly because  the  Dublin  and  Irish  people  stead- 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

fastly  refuse  to  keep  them  clean.  To  all  In- 
tents and  purposes  the  Irish  people  have  lost, 
if  indeed  they  ever  possessed,  that  gift  of 
punctilious  domesticity,  which  insists  first  and 
last  and  always  on  cleanliness.  In  Dublin 
you  will  come  upon  more  dirty  hotels  and 
more  dirty  houses  than  in  pretty  well  any 
other  city  of  its  size  in  Europe.  True,  the 
dirt  has  the  merit  of  not  being  too  obvious, 
and  falling  short  of  the  scandalous;  but  it  is 
still  there,  and  you  cannot  get  away  from  it. 
Properly  looked  into,  it  recommends  itself  to 
you  as  the  dirt  of  a  happy-go-lucky,  neglect- 
ful, behind-hand  and  poverty-stricken  people, 
rather  than  of  a  people  who  are  flagrantly 
given  over  to  dirt  for  its  own  sake.  It  is  the 
dirt  of  the  slattern  who  is  forever  dusting 
things  with  her  apron,  rather  than  of  the 
stout  idleback  for  whom  dust  and  grime  and 
sloppiness  have  no  terrors,  and  no  reproach. 
It  is  a  dirt  which  is  the  direct  consequence  of 
bad  seasons,  the  decay  of  trade,  monetary 
stringency,  and  public  and  private  listlessness 
152 


DIRT 

and  apathy.  It  is  the  kind  of  dirt  which  one 
associates  with  the  boarding-houses  of  elderly 
ladies  who  have  seen  "  better  days."  Ire- 
land's better  days  have  been  few  and  far  be- 
tween, and  they  would  seem  to  be  all  past. 
Hence,  no  doubt,  the  dustiness  and  dinginess 
and  shabby  gentility  of  her  parlors.  In  an 
Irish  hotel  dirt  and  its  common  concomitant, 
tumbledownness,  are  ever  before  you.  The 
floors  clamor  to  be  swept,  the  furniture  would 
give  a  day  of  its  life  for  a  polishing,  the  wall 
papers  are  faded  and  fly-blown,  there  are 
cobwebs  in  the  top  corners  and  dust  in  the 
bottom  corners,  the  windows  are  rickety  and 
perfunctorily  cleaned,  the  carpets  infirm  and 
old,  the  linen  worn  and  yellow  with  age,  the 
crockery  cracked  and  chipped,  the  cutlery  dull 
and  greasy,  and  the  general  air  of  the  place 
shabby  and  forlorn.  I  do  not  say  that  there 
are  no  cleanly  and  spick-and-span  hotels  in 
Dublin;  for  there  is  at  least  one  such  estab- 
lishment. But,  in  the  main,  what  one  may 
term  the  semi-clean,  semi-dirty,  used-to-be 

11  153 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

kind  of  hotel  prevails.  Even  the  waiters, 
though  their  hair  be  greased  and  their  faces 
shine  by  virtue  of  vigorous  applications  of 
soap,  wear  frayed  and  threadbare  swallow- 
tails and  a  sort  of  perennial  yesterday's  shirt- 
front.  And  what  is  true  of  the  hotels  is  true 
of  the  houses.  There  is  a  district  between 
Sackville  Street  and  the  Railway  Sta- 
tion which  contains  a  very  large  number  of 
the  somberest,  most  forbidding,  and  dirtiest- 
looking  domiciles  it  has  ever  been  my  lot  to 
come  across.  Formerly  these  houses  were  the 
homes  of  the  easy  and  the  well-to-do;  now 
they  are  let  off  in  tenements  to  the  poorest 
of  the  poor.  Black  and  grinding  poverty 
peeps  out  of  the  cracked  and  paper-patched 
windows  of  them;  groups  of  grubby,  bare- 
legged, blue-cold  children  huddle  round  their 
decrepit  doors,  or  scamper  up  and  down  the 
filthy  pavements  in  front  of  them.  The 
places  may  be  sanitary  enough  within  the 
meaning  of  the  Acts,  but  that  they  are  filthy 
and  foul,  to  a  nauseating  degree,  no  person 
154 


DIRT 

can  doubt.  Such  rookeries  would  be  clean 
swept  away  by  the  authorities  in  any  English 
city.  In  Dublin  nobody  seems  to  trouble 
about  them,  or  to  be  in  the  smallest  sense 
disturbed  by  them.  They  are  a  part  and  par- 
cel of  dear,  dirty  Dublin,  and  haply  Dublin 
would  not  be  Dublin  without  them. 

In  the  other  Irish  cities  and  towns  the  same 
tendency  to  squalor  and  grime  and  filth  is 
painfully  noticeable.  Even  in  a  center  like 
Portadown,  which,  be  it  noted,  is  Protestant 
and  to  a  great  extent  new,  the  same  undesira- 
ble traits  assail  you  pretty  well  wherever  you 
go.  In  a  city  set  on  a  hill,  without  a  factory 
to  its  name,  I  found  a  blackness  and  a  grime 
which  reminded  me  of  nothing  so  much  as 
Gravesend  or  Stockport.  The  hotel  in  that 
same  city  was  as  crazy  as  it  was  chilly  and 
comfortless — poky  rooms  and  dark  little  pas- 
sages, meager  and  dubious  furnishings,  and 
dirt,  dirt,  dirt,  from  basement  to  attic.  Yet 
the  place  seemed  populous  with  cleaner 
wenches,  floor-scrubbers,  and  clout-women. 

155 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

There  was  a  boy  in  a  green  apron,  who  ap- 
peared to  do  nothing  all  day  but  dust  the 
banisters,  and  the  waiters  were  eternally  flick- 
ing the  dust  of  things  with  their  napkins. 
And  such  waiters:  wall-eyed,  heated,  fum- 
bling, grumpy,  and  incompetent.  They  in- 
sisted on  getting  in  one  another's  way,  and 
they  had  a  gift  of  dilatoriness  that  amounted 
to  genius.  In  this  place,  let  me  set  down  a 
small  fact  about  the  Irish  waiter  which  may, 
perhaps,  save  future  travelers  in  Ireland  some 
trouble.  If  you  ask  an  English  waiter  for  a 
time-table  he  will  bring  it  to  you,  and  leave 
you  to  your  own  devices.  If  you  ask  an  Irish 
waiter,  he  will  say  "  Time-table,  yes,  sir. 
Where  will  you  be  afther  goin',  sir?  "  You 
are  taken  unawares,  and  quite  foolishly  tell 
him  the  name  of  the  next  town  on  your  itin- 
erary. Forthwith  he  informs  you  that  there 
is  a  very  good  hotel  there  "  be  the  name  of 
the  Jukes  Head,"  and  that  the  next  train 
"  convanient  "  goes  at  "  wan-thirty."  Is  it 
a  quick  train?  "  Oh,  yes."  Will  he  see  that 
156 


DIRT 

your  baggage  is  taken  to  the  station  in  time 
to  catch  it?  Certainly  he  will.  You  keep 
your  mind  easy  and  turn  up  at  the  station  at 
"  wan-thirty."  There  is  a  train  at  one-thirty, 
it  is  true,  but,  unluckily  for  you,  it  does  not 
go  within  a  hundred  miles  of  your  place  of 
destination.  The  train  you  ought  to  have 
caught  went  at  ten-thirty,  and  there  is  not 
another  one  till  late  at  night,  while,  if  it  be 
Saturday,  you  must  wait  till  Monday  morn- 
ing, because  there  are  practically  no  Sunday 
trains  in  Ireland.  Do  not  imagine  for  a  mo- 
ment that  your  Irish  waiter  has  misinformed 
you  with  malice  aforethought,  or  out  of  a 
desire  to  lengthen  your  sojourn  in  his  em- 
ployer's hotel;  because  this  is  not  the  case. 
He  is  merely  an  Irishman,  and  therefore  a 
born  blunderer;  and  he  does  his  best  to  blun- 
der every  time. 


157 


CHAPTER   XVII 

THE   TOURIST 

THE  tourist  is  the  curse  of  Ireland,  as  he 
is  the  curse  of  most  places.  When  one  comes 
to  consider  the  enormous  number  of  griev- 
ances the  Irish  and  their  political  figure-heads 
have  managed  to  rake  up,  one  wonders  that 
the  tourist  should  hitherto  have  escaped. 
That  he  constitutes  a  grievance,  and  a  griev- 
ance which  affects  seriously  the  main  body 
of  the  Irish  people,  can  not  be  doubted.  It 
is  quite  obvious,  to  begin  with,  that  the  tour- 
ist in  Ireland  is  usually  of  the  hated  Sassenach 
race.  Irishmen  do  not  tour  in  their  own 
country  as  Englishmen  do,  or  as  Scotchmen 
have  been  known  to  do.  They  have  too  little 
money  for  indulgences  of  that  kind,  and  if 
money  be  plentiful  they  prefer  to  visit  Eng- 
land or  America.  The  Englishman,  how- 
158 


THE    TOURIST 

ever,  insists  on  taking  a  holiday  in  Ireland 
sometime  in  his  life,  even  though  it  be  only 
on  his  honeymoon.  So  that  in  the  more 
suitable  months  the  country  bristles  with  tour- 
ists, and  the  great  majority  of  them  are  Eng- 
lish. Secondly,  the  tourist,  being  English,  is 
always  more  or  less  hilarious,  supercilious  and 
aggressive,  and  these  are  qualities  of  which 
the  Irish  of  all  people  least  like  a  display,  at 
any  rate  from  an  Englishman.  Time  out 
of  mind  the  English  tourist  has  been  the 
covert  bete  noire  of  the  Continental  peoples 
on  account  of  these  very  traits.  An  Eng- 
lishman on  the  Continent,  especially  if  he  be 
a  middle-class  Englishman,  or  a  very  wealthy 
Englishman,  has  a  knack  of  divesting  him- 
self utterly  of  the  thin  veneer  of  social  de- 
cency which  he  manages  to  maintain  at  home. 
Somehow  the  air  of  the  Continent  exhilarates 
him  to  all  sorts  of  posturing  and  ridiculous- 
ness. The  vulgarian,  the  Philistine  and  the 
snob  in  him  become  greatly  emphasized.  He 
can  shout  aloud,  and  be  rude  to  everybody, 
159 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

because  he  believes  that  nobody  understands 
what  he  is  pleased  to  call  his  lingo.  Besides 
which  the  Englishman  on  the  Continent  al- 
ways believes  in  his  private  bosom  that  he 
is  a  philanthropist,  a  sort  of  circular-touring 
benevolence,  as  it  were.  "  Who  is  it,"  he 
inquires  grandiloquently,  "  that  keeps  these 
pore  foreigners  going?  Why,  the  English, 
and  the  English  alone.  It  is  we  who  bring 
millions  of  pounds  to  their  starved,  tax-bur- 
dened countries.  It  is  we  who  populate  their 
rapacious  hotels  and  make  their  seasons  for 
them,  and  drop  our  idiot  moneys  at  their 
gambling  tables,  and  pay  francs  at  the  en- 
trances to  their  art  galleries,  and  climb  their 
rotten  mountains,  and  steam,  to  soft  Lydian 
airs,  up  their  rivers,  and  bathe  in  their  luke- 
warm seas,  and  tip  them  and  patronize  them, 
and  joke  with  them,  and  generally  afford 
them  opportunities  for  existence."  This  at- 
titude has  been  noted  and  laughed  at  by  the 
cynical,  time  out  of  mind;  but  it  can  not  be 
eradicated  from  the  Englishman's  fairly 
1 60 


THE    TOURIST 

comprehensive  stock  of  idiosyncrasies,  and  it 
remains  to  this  day  typical  of  the  breed.  To 
Ireland  the  English  tourist  proceeds  focused 
for  pretty  well  the  same  view  of  things.  Of 
course,  he  is  disposed  to  look  upon  your  Irish- 
man as  being  rather  more  of  a  man  and  a 
brother  than  is  the  low  foreigner.  Further, 
he  invariably  believes  that  by  a  judicious  ex- 
penditure on  "  drinks,"  coupled  with  an  easy, 
slap-you-on-the-back  but  still  superior  man- 
ner, he  can  extract  from  the  Irishmen  with 
whom  he  comes  in  contact  the  whole  secret 
of  the  Irish  Question.  In  other  words,  he 
makes  a  point  of  going  to  Ireland  with  his 
eyes  open;  so  that  when  he  returns  he  may 
remark  huskily  in  his  club — "  Sir,  I  have 
visited  Ireland,  and  I  know  the  Irish  people 
through  and  through.  Waiter,  a  large 
Scotch,  please !  "  Thus  is  the  altruism  of 
the  tourist  in  Ireland  tempered  with  a  taste 
for  inquiry  and  politics.  I  suppose  that  in 
no  country  in  the  world  is  the  tourist  al- 
lowed so  much  of  his  fling  as  in  this  same 
161 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

green  Erin.  For  example,  in  Ireland  he 
takes  care  to  call  every  man  "  Pat,"  and 
every  woman  "  Kathleen  mavourneen."  If 
he  called  a  Frenchman  "  Froggy,"  or  a  Ger- 
man "  Johnny  Deutscher  "  he  would  stand  a 
good  chance  of  getting  his  nose  pulled.  But 
in  Ireland  a  bold  peasantry  has  learned  to 
smile  and  smile  and  touch  the  hat,  and  take 
the  coppers,  and  provide  the  political  informa- 
tion for  which  his  honor  is  gasping  without 
so  much  as  turning  a  hair.  It  is  not  really 
in  the  Irish  blood  to  take  these  traveling 
mountebanks,  with  their  loud  suits  and  louder 
manners  and  louder  money,  seriously  or  even 
indifferently.  On  the  other  hand,  your  true 
Irish  resent  in  their  hearts  the  entire  business. 
It  is  their  poverty  and  not  their  wills  which 
consent;  though  singularly  enough,  as  I  have 
already  said,  you  will  seldom  find  an  Irish- 
man indulging  himself  in  growls  about  it. 
And  it  is  this  very  poverty  which  might  rea- 
sonably give  rise  to  the  Irishman's  third 
grievance  against  the  tourist.  For  an  Eng- 
162 


THE    TOURIST 

lishman  traveling  in  Ireland  is  always  a  sort 
of  perambulating  incitement  to  envy,  be- 
cause of  his  apparent  wealth.  He  may  be 
only  a  clerk  out  for  a  fortnight's  "  rest  and 
change "  on  money  squeezed  out  of  the 
meagerest  kind  of  salary;  yet  to  the  penniless 
Irishman  he  seems  literally  to  be  made  of 
wealth.  And  Pat — let  us  call  him  Pat,  so 
that  the  tourists  of  this  world  may  know 
whom  we  mean — is  not  without  certain  rea- 
soning powers  of  his  own,  poverty-stricken 
though  he  may  be.  It  seems  to  me  only 
human  that  he  should  reason  about  the  Eng- 
lish tourist  in  a  way  which  brings  him  little 
comfort  and  throws  considerable  discredit  on 
England.  He  perceives  that  compared  with 
himself  the  Englishman  is  not  altogether  a 
person  of  genius  or  an  angel  of  light.  His 
ignorance  is  appalling,  even  to  an  Irishman; 
his  manners  are  none  of  the  choicest;  his 
capacity  for  eating  and  drinking  borders  on 
the  marvelous.  "  Pat "  notes  these  things 
and  wonders.  He  wonders  why  there  should 
163 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

be  such  tremendous  gulfs  between  loving  sub- 
jects of  the  King.  He  wonders  where  people 
who  travel  on  cheap  tickets  get  all  their 
money;  he  wonders  how  they  manage  to  pay 
fifty  pounds  a  rod  for  certain  fishing; 
or  fifty  pounds  a  gun  for  certain  shooting; 
he  wonders  why  they  cackle  so  about  priest- 
craft, and  Home  Rule,  and  the  development 
of  industry;  he  wonders  whether  they  have 
really  been  elected  by  heaven  to  be  a  domi- 
nant people;  he  wonders  why  he  himself 
should  have  been  given  over  to  their  govern- 
ance; and  with  all  his  wondering  he  is  not 
consoled.  There  is  probably  nobody  to  tell 
him  that  for  irremediable  reasons  the  Irish 
are  never  likely  to  become  a  happy  and  pros- 
perous nation.  There  is  nobody  to  tell  him 
that  this  dazzling  Englishman  is  so  much 
gross  material,  with  no  tradition  of  spiritu- 
ality at  the  back  of  him.  There  is  nobody  to 
tell  him  that  it  is  the  British  habit  to  think 
first  and  foremost  of  its  own  welfare  and 
comfort,  and  that  it  pities  rather  than  ad- 
164 


THE    TOURIST 

mires  those  countries  or  persons  who  have 
been  foredoomed  to  contribute  to  them. 
Therefore  he  goes  on  wondering  without 
consolation,  and  within  him  there  is  discon- 
tent and  bitterness,  despite  his  outward  sub- 
servience. There  has  been  very  tall  talk  in 
sundry  well-meaning  circles  as  to  the  advan- 
tages which  are  to  accrue  to  Ireland  from 
the  development  of  her  trade  in  tourists.  No 
doubt  it  is  extremely  heterodox  to  say  so,  but 
for  myself,  I  incline  to  the  opinion  that  the 
tourist  business  on  its  present  lines  is  a  snare 
and  a  delusion  and  a  demoralization.  It 
takes  money  into  the  country  certainly,  but 
it  takes  other  things  which  are  not  by  any 
means  so  desirable.  Moreover,  that  very 
money  helps  materially  to  cloud  and  confuse 
important  issues.  The  real  condition  of 
Ireland,  as  it  is  known  to  Irish  officialdom, 
and  as  it  should  be  known  to  Englishmen,  is 
glossed  over  and  hidden  away  as  a  direct  re- 
sult of  the  eleemosynary  tendencies  of  the 
English  tourist.  A  people  of  the  temper  and 
165 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

parts  of  the  Irish  people  should  be  in  a 
position  to  live  out  of  Irish  land  and  Irish  in- 
dustry, and  not  be  in  any  serious  sense  de- 
pendent upon  the  fitful  generosity  of  sight- 
seers and  problem-solvers.  Ireland  has  had 
far  too  much  largesse,  both  private  and  pub- 
lic. The  English  tourist  distributes  his  shil- 
lings; the  English  Government  distributes 
its  loans  and  other  financial  bolsterings-up. 
What  is  wanted  is  a  fair  field  and  no  favor 
for  Irish  labor.  It  will  take  many  gener- 
ations of  tourists  to  provide  for  Ireland  any 
such  good  gift.  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
Government  loans  can  provide  either.  A 
newer  and  little  less  rapacious  and  less  unin- 
telligent race  of  landlords  might  achieve  it. 
The  bland,  benevolent  money-dropping  Eng- 
lishman, who  out  of  his  generosity  or  his 
scheme  of  politics  desires  to  assist  the  Irish 
people,  should  buy  a  place  in  Ireland  and  do 
his  best  to  live  there.  The  country  is  full 
of  properties  which  would  be  cheap  at  treble 
the  prices  that  are  now  being  asked  for  them. 
166 


THE    TOURIST 

There  is  plenty  of  land  and  there  is  plenty 
of  labor.  The  Land  Laws,  it  is  true,  seem 
on  the  face  of  them  ridiculous,  that  is  to 
say,  if  you  happen  to  be  a  landlord  whose 
eye  is  forever  on  the  rent-roll  and  the  auto- 
matic improvement  of  properties  at  other 
people's  expense.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
you  are  a  comfortable,  high  Tory,  patriarchal 
landlord,  with  bowels,  and  a  proper  apprecia- 
tion of  sport,  and  a  proper  interest  in  agri- 
culture and  the  breeding  of  cattle,  Ireland 
need  have  no  terrors  for  you.  There  is  a 
notion  abroad  that  the  Irish  farmer  has  deep- 
rooted  prejudices  against  landlords  of  what- 
ever degree.  We  are  told  that  he  is  a 
confirmed  shirker  of  the  prime  duty  of  rent- 
paying,  and  that  he  will  let  a  holding  go  to 
rack  and  ruin  for  the  sole  purpose  of  cheap- 
ening its  value,  so  that  he  may  himself  buy 
it  in  for  the  merest  song.  The  demand 
throughout  the  country,  we  are  told,  is  for 
farmer  and  peasant  proprietorship,  and  the 
legislature  has  formulated  wonderful  machin- 
167 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

ery  in  the  interest  of  such  proprietorship.  My 
own  view  is  that  of  two  evils  the  Irish  culti- 
vators have  in  this  matter  chosen  the  lesser. 
On  the  one  hand  they  had  rack  rents,  absentee 
landlords  and  agents  who,  if  they  had  bodies 
to  be  shot,  appear  to  have  had  very  small 
souls  to  be  saved.  On  the  other  hand,  they 
have  been  offered  schemes  of  purchase  that 
sound  very  well  but  do  not  work  out  quite 
so  well  in  practise.  Still  a  bad  scheme  of  pur- 
chase is  better  than  bad  landlords  and  worse 
agents.  An  intelligent  and  reasonable  land- 
lord of  bucolic  tastes,  who  will  look  as 
sharply  after  his  agent  or  factor  as  he  will 
look  after  his  tenants  on  rent-day,  could  in 
my  opinion  do  quite  as  well  in  Ireland  as 
he  can  do  in  England.  In  a  sentence,  Ire- 
land wants  settling,  not  touring. 


168 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

POTATOES 

A  GENTLEMAN  who  is  universally  ap- 
plauded as  a  handler  of  the  pencil  and  a 
smart  after-dinner  speaker  lately  remarked 
that  if  he  were  compelled  to  give  up  one  of 
two  things,  to  wit,  tobacco  or  Christianity, 
he  would  give  up  Christianity.  Then,  with 
a  slack-minded  man's  weakness,  he  went  on 
to  explain  that  a  Christianity  which  prohib- 
ited tobacco  would  not  be  Christianity  at  all. 
"  When  all  things  were  made,"  we  are  told, 
"  nothing  was  made  better  than  tobacco." 
Without  being  an  anti-tobacconist,  without 
being  a  non-smoker,  without,  indeed,  being 
other  than  "  a  great  blower  of  the  cloud," 
it  is  quite  reasonable  for  one  to  doubt 
whether  on  the  whole  tobacco  is  the  bless- 
ing that  modern  men  hold  it  to  be.  There 

12  169 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

is  no  evidence  to  show  that  men's  intel- 
lects have  improved  since  the  introduction 
of  smoking.  It  seems  probable  that  the  high- 
water  mark  of  British  brains  had  been  reached 
somewhat  prior  to  the  time  in  which  James  I. 
had  occasion  to  adorn  polite  letters  with  his 
notorious  "  Counterblast."  Shakespeare  did 
not  smoke.  Mitcham  shag  was  nothing  to 
Ben  Jonson,  nor  navy  plug  to  Milton.  It  is 
our  Barries,  and  our  J.  K.  Jeromes,  and  our 
F.  C.  Goulds  who  electrify  the  country  with 
their  pipes  in  their  mouths.  Now,  the  person 
who  is  commonly  credited  with  having  intro- 
duced the  art  and  practise  of  tobacco  smoking 
into  England  is  Sir  Walter  Raleigh.  There 
is  a  legend  that  when  that  gentleman's  ser- 
vant first  saw  him  smoking,  he  rushed  out 
for  a  bucket  of  water,  in  the  belief  that  his 
master  was  on  fire.  By  a  strange  coincidence, 
it  is  this  same  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  who  is  com- 
monly credited  with  having  introduced  the 
potato  into  Ireland.  Could  Sir  Walter  Ral- 
eigh's servant  have  perceived  what  black  and 
170 


POTATOES 

fearsome  troubles  the  potatoes  in  his  master's 
pockets  or  other  receptacle  would  one  day  call 
down  upon  the  Irish  people,  it  is  conceivable 
that  he  might  have  rushed  out  for  something 
even  more  drastic  than  a  bucket  of  water. 
The  potato,  undoubtedly,  is  an  elegant  fruit. 
All  men  know  that  with  beef,  mutton,  and 
flesh  meats  in  general,  it  is  everything  that 
could  be  desired.  As  a  staple  article  of  food, 
however,  it  cannot  be  considered  otherwise 
than  as  a  flagrant  and  wicked  mistake.  In 
Ireland  the  potato  has  become  a  staple  article 
of  food.  Whole  generations  of  Irishmen 
have  battened  upon  it — in  good  times,  with 
the  addendum  of  a  little  buttermilk  or  a  scrap 
of  bacon,  in  bad  times  with  the  addendum  of 
a  pinch  of  salt.  And  as  the  times  in  Ireland 
have  been  immemorially  bad  times,  the  pinch 
of  salt  has  been  most  frequently  to  the  fore. 
In  plain  words,  the  Irish  people  are  a  potato- 
fed  people.  In  theory  the  potato  might  well 
have  been  specially  created  by  Providence  to 
fit  in  with  the  Irish  temperament.  The  Irish 
171 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

temperament  has  distinct  tendencies  in  the  di- 
rection of  indolence;  the  potato,  heaven  be 
thanked,  is  a  tuber  which  does  not  demand 
too  great  a  skill  or  too  great  an  amount  of 
labor  in  cultivation.  You  cut  it  up,  dump  it 
into  the  ground,  and  it  grows  of  itself.  Also 
it  is  a  prolific  plant,  and  will  make  more  dead 
weight  to  the  rood  than  almost  anything  else 
that  grows — the  which,  of  course,  saves  dig- 
ging. A  peasant  with  a  potato-patch  is  be- 
lieved to  be  wholly  beyond  the  reach  of 
hunger,  and  his  standard  of  emolument  may 
conveniently  be  adjusted  for  him  accordingly. 
He  himself  is  aware  that  it  is  out  of  his  po- 
tato-patch that  he  and  his  family  have  got  to 
subsist,  and  that  all  the  rest  is  luxury  of  the 
most  bloated  order.  Philosophers  can  invari- 
ably dispense  with  luxury,  and  the  Irishman 
is  a  philosopher.  He  can  afford  to  sit  and 
watch  his  potatoes  growing,  as  content  as  any 
king.  For  not  only  shall  that  green  plant 
yield  unto  him  and  the  "  childer  "  the  staff 
of  life,  but  it  shall  also  furnish  for  him  the 
172 


POTATOES 

wherewithal  for  the  innocent  manufacture  of 
potheen,  which  is  life  itself.  It  is  a  singular 
fact,  though  a  fact  big  with  meaning,  that 
while  the  Irishman  has  been  a  potato-grower 
from  Raleigh's  time,  he  has  not  succeeded  in 
attracting  to  himself  any  special  reputation 
as  a  cultivator  in  this  department.  Nobody 
sets  up  the  Irish  potato  for  a  peculiar  deli- 
cacy. Jersey,  Cheshire,  Lancashire,  and  parts 
of  Yorkshire  and  Lincolnshire  have  secured 
for  themselves  all  the  glory  and  honor  and 
profit  which  is  to  be  got  out  of  potato-grow- 
ing. It  is  said,  however,  that  the  Irish  can 
cook  a  potato  against  anybody  in  the  world; 
but  this  is  doubtful,  inasmuch  as  the  Dublin 
potato — and  for  that  matter  the  Cork  or  Kil- 
kenny or  Newry  potato — is  neither  better  nor 
worse  cooked  than  the  common  tuber  of  Cock- 
aigne. This,  however,  is  by  the  way.  The 
hard  fact  is  that  all  over  Ireland  you  are 
brought  face  to  face  with  a  poverty  and  a 
desolation  which  are  the  palpable  outcome  of 
too  great  a  reliance  upon  a  doubtful  staple. 

173 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

The  very  physique  of  the  people  bears  abun- 
dant witness  to  the  circumstance  that  a  diet 
of  pure  potato  is  not  good  for  one.  It  in- 
duces a  ricketiness  of  build,  a  lankness  and  a 
want  of  tone;  not  to  mention  a  confirmed 
hungriness  of  look.  Quite  half  the  people 
of  Ireland  might  pass  for  persons  who  had 
lately  been  emulating  the  fasting  man,  or  had 
just  been  let  loose  from  a  severe  term  of 
penal  servitude.  It  is  intolerable  that  it 
should  be  so,  but  there  is  no  getting  away 
from  it.  The  Irish  people  are  physiologically 
underfed.  They  may  eat  to  repletion,  but 
as  even  an  Irish  potato  consists  mainly  of 
starch  and  water,  precious  little  corporeal 
good  is  to  be  got  out  of  it.  When  the  body 
is  starved,  the  mind  dwindles  and  languishes. 
A  potato-fed  man  can  no  more  be  witty  or 
wise  or  energetic  than  a  man  fed  on  draff  and 
husks.  That  is  why  the  Irish  have  almost  en- 
tirely lost  the  spirits  and  the  volatility  and 
the  graces  for  which  they  were  formerly  re- 
nowned. If  you  are  to  make  good  use  of  an 
174 


POTATOES 

Irishman,  as  of  any  other  man,  you  must  ply 
him  with  nutriment.  The  potato  is  not  nutri- 
ment in  anything  like  a  complete  sense.  Even 
that  exceedingly  popular  work,  The  Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica,  has  no  feeling  for  the  po- 
tato where  the  Irish  are  concerned.  Under 
the  head  of  "  Ireland  "  I  find,  among  others, 
the  following  sentences :  "  Introduced  by 
Raleigh  in  1610,  the  cultivation  of  this  dan- 
gerous tuber  developed  with  extraordinary 
rapidity."  "  When  Petty  wrote,  early  in 
Charles  II. 's  reign,  this  demoralizing  escu- 
lent was  already  the  national  food."  "  When 
the  *  precarious  exotic  '  failed,  an  awful  fam- 
ine was  the  result."  The  Encyclopedia  Bri- 
tannica also  obliges  us  with  the  appended  in- 
formation: "The  labor  of  one  man  could 
plant  potatoes  enough  to  feed  forty.  .  .  . 
Potatoes  cannot  be  kept  very  long,  but  there 
was  no  attempt  to  keep  them  at  all ;  they  were 
left  in  the  ground,  and  dug  as  required.  A 
frost  which  penetrated  deep  caused  the  fam- 
ine of  1739.  Even  with  the  modern  system 

175, 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

of  storing  in  pits,  the  potato  does  not  last 
through  the  summer,  and  the  '  meal  months  ' 
— June,  July  and  August — always  brought 
great  hardship.  .  .  .  Between  1831  and 
1842,  there  were  six  seasons  of  dearth,  ap- 
proaching in  some  places  to  famine.  .  .  . 
In  1845  ^e  population  had  swelled  to  8,295,- 
06 1,  the  greater  part  of  whom  depended  on 
the  potato  only."  The  greater  part  of  the 
population  of  Ireland  proper — that  is  to  say 
of  Ireland  with  Northern  Diamond  left  out 
— depends  upon  the  potato  to  this  day.  It  is 
a  state  of  affairs  which  cannot  be  too  severely 
deprecated ;  it  is  a  state  of  affairs  which  ought 
in  no  circumstances  to  be  allowed  to  continue ; 
it  is  a  state  of  affairs  which  convinces  one 
only  too  clearly  that  Ireland  has  for  centuries 
been  governed  either  by  rogues  or  by  block- 
heads. Yet  the  potato,  like  the  tourist,  does 
not  appear  hitherto  to  have  been  written  down 
for  an  Irish  grievance  or  injustice.  True, 
The  Encyclopedia  Britannica  condemns  it  as 
we  have  seen;  but  it  does  so  rather  by  innu- 
176 


POTATOES 

endo  than  of  set  purpose.  I  am  not  aware 
that  the  restriction  of  potato  growing  has 
ever  figured  as  a  plank  in  the  platform  of 
the  Irish  Party.  Indeed,  to  suggest  it,  would 
have  looked  like  infamy  in  the  face  of  the 
condition  of  the  people.  But  until  the  Irish 
are  taught  that  the  potato  is  not  the  first  and 
last  thing  God  made,  they  will  remain  open 
to  the  disasters  and  the  disabilities  which  too 
great  a  dependence  upon  it  have  invariably 
brought  about.  It  is  lamentable  to  note  the 
limitations  of  the  Irish  mind  as  to  what  is 
possible  in  the  matter  of  food.  With  six- 
pence, your  indigenous,  starving  Irishman 
will  purchase  inevitably  a  dish  of  potatoes 
and  as  much  whisky  as  can  be  screwed  out 
of  the  money  when  the  potatoes  have  been 
paid  for.  The  beer  and  bread  and  cheese, 
or  bread  and  bacon  of  the  English  rustic  may 
be  reckoned  a  Lucullian  feast  in  comparison, 
and  they  are  at  least  three  times  more  nour- 
ishing to  the  body,  if  not  to  the  brain.  And 
the  worst  of  it  is,  that  your  proper  potato-fed 

177 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

Irishman  cannot  forego  his  hereditary  appe- 
tite for  the  "  esculent "  aliment  of  his  coun- 
try any  more  than  a  Scotchman  can  forego 
oatmeal  and  offal.  In  the  midst  of  plenty  an 
Irishman  of  the  Irish  will  make  for  potatoes 
as  surely  as  the  needle  makes  for  the  north. 
He  prefers  them.  To  take  an  instance,  Mr. 
George  Bernard  Shaw  believes  himself  to  be 
a  vegetarian  by  free-will  and  out  of  altruism. 
In  point  of  fact,  vegetarianism  is  easy  and 
possible  for  him,  because  he  is  an  Irishman, 
and  consequently  comes  of  an  ingrained,  po- 
tato-feeding stock,  however  remote.  His  wit 
and  other  parts,  if  any,  are  to  be  accounted 
for  by  the  circumstance  that  he  has  the  good 
sense  to  supplement  his  potato-flour  with  pea- 
meal,  coco-butter,  and  other  garnishes.  A 
few  thousand  tons  of  lentils,  with  pepper  and 
salt  to  taste,  would  do  Ireland  more  good 
than  a  new  Land  Act.  She  has  had  enough 
potato  and  enough  Land  Acts  to  last  her  for 
the  next  hundred  years. 


178 


CHAPTER   XIX 

PIGS 

IN  Ireland  the  pig  has  long  been  under- 
stood to  pay  the  rent.  Hence,  no  doubt,  it 
comes  to  pass  that  Irish  rents  are  not  always 
paid  up.  That  an  animal  such  as  the  pig, 
a  grunting,  groveling  wallower  in  sloughs, 
•should  be  so  popular  a  favorite  among  the 
Irish  does  not  speak  too  well  for  them.  In 
England  the  favorite  and  most  bepraised  do- 
mestic beast  is  the  dog.  The  keeping  of  a 
pup  of  some  sort  is  a  mark  of  true  English 
blood.  Dogs  in  Ireland  do  not  appear  to  be 
so  popular.  The  fact  is,  of  course,  that  the 
pig  has  been  thrust  down  the  Irish  throat 
by  greedy,  grasping  landlordism.  Their  wor- 
ships, the  factors  and  agents,  perceiving  that 
good  man  Patrick  was  hard  put  to  it  for 
the  means  of  subsistence  when  he  had  satis- 

179 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

fied  their  rapacious  demands,  informed  him 
blithely  that  a  pig  would  make  an  admirable 
domestic  pet  and  addendum  to  the  potato- 
patch,  and,  unlike  a  common  dog,  could, 
when  you  have  petted  him  to  a  certain  sleek- 
ness, be  killed  and  eaten,  or  salted  and  sold. 
So  that  the  wild  Irishman  has  taken  to  pig- 
keeping  with  a  zest  which  is  without  parallel 
among  other  races;  whereas  for  dogs  he  has 
little  or  no  room.  The  English  collier,  who 
on  being  met  in  a  lane  with  a  couple  of  fine 
terriers,  was  asked  by  a  thrifty  land-holder 
if  he,  the  collier,  might  not  have  shown 
greater  wisdom  had  he  spent  his  money  on 
pigs  rather  than  on  terriers,  replied:  "  Per- 
haps so,  but  a  man  would  look  a  damned  fool 
going  ratting  wi'  two  pigs."  One  supposes 
that  in  Ireland  if  the  people  ever  do  go  rat- 
ting, they  do  it  with  these  same  porkers. 

Quite  apart  from  questions  of  sport,  how- 
ever,  the  pig  is  certainly  not  the  sweetest 
of  quadrupeds,  and  to  have  him  with  you 
continually  in  the  house,  like  William  had 
1 80 


PIGS 

Dora,  must  be  something  of  a  trial,  rent  or 
no  rent.  It  is  notable,  as  indicating  the  dif- 
ference between  the  treatment  meted  out  to 
the  English  and  to  the  Irish,  that  when  a 
certain  woman  of  Epping,  or  some  such 
neighborhood,  took  to  the  keeping  of  pigs 
on  the  Irish  principle,  she  was  swooped  down 
upon  by  the  authorities  who  have  charge  of 
the  public  sanitation,  and  compelled  to  part 
with  her  pet.  In  Ireland  you  can  maintain 
familiarly  in  your  kitchen  as  many  pigs  as 
you  like,  and  nobody  will  interfere  with  you. 
Possibly  the  relationship  between  the  Irish- 
man and  his  pig  might  be  considered  reason- 
able if  one  were  by  any  means  certain  that 
when  the  pig  has  discharged  his  duties  as 
a  household  pet  and  come  squalling  to  the 
knife,  he  were  really  meat  for  the  Irishman 
and  his  family.  I  am  afraid,  however,  that 
in  too  many  instances  the  people  are  so  fright- 
fully poor  that  the  bulk  and  best  parts  of 
the  family  pig's  carcass  pass  out  of  Ireland 
on  to  the  breakfast  tables  of  the  bloated 
181 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

English,  under  the  name  and  guise  of  Irish 
provisions.  On  the  whole,  one  inclines  to 
the  view  that  even  as,  in  the  long  run,  the 
Irish  would  be  the  happier  and  the  better  fed 
without  the  potato,  they  might  with  advan- 
tage dispense  also  with  the  pig.  It  sounds 
like  rank  heresy,  but  I  commend  this  sugges- 
tion to  all  thoughtful  legislators.  The  pig 
requires  neither  care  nor  attention  in  the 
matter  of  his  bringing  up;  he  is  a  feeder 
on  refuse  and  garbage;  he  would  just  as  soon 
sleep  on  your  domestic  hearth  as  in  the 
snuggest  sty  that  was  ever  built,  and,  gen- 
erally speaking,  he  may  be  considered  a 
very  proper  beast  for  association  with  an  in- 
dolent man.  With  the  potatoes  shooting  up 
merrily  forninst  your  cabin  door,  and  the 
pig  fattening  himself  gruntingly  and  without 
assistance  from  yourself,  you  may  well  re- 
cline in  honeyed  ease  and  never  really  trouble 
to  do  a  day's  work.  And  it  follows  that  in 
the  course  of  time  you  fall  irrevocably  into 
the  potato-and-pig  habit,  and  acquiesce  in  the 
182 


PIGS 

potato-and-pig  standard  of  living,  comfort, 
and  culture.  You  vegetate  like  the  tuber,  and 
you  grunt  and  snore  and  thrive  on  nothing, 
like  the  porker.  It  suits  the  landlords  and 
the  legislators  and  the  philosophers,  and  it 
fits  in  entirely  with  that  taint  of  indolence 
which  always  lurks  in  the  Irish  blood.  The 
farming  of  one  pig,  not  to  mention  the  keep- 
ing of  pigs  in  cabins,  should  be  prohibited  by 
Act  of  Parliament.  There  would  naturally 
be  great  howls  from  the  Irish  people,  for 
nobody  is  loved  with  a  greater  love,  or 
treated  with  a  greater  amount  of  respect  in 
Ireland,  than  the  single  pig.  But  he  is  a 
blight  and  a  mistake,  and  a  failure  both 
economically  and  socially.  The  Irish  of 
America,  it  is  true,  have  made  large  fortunes 
out  of  him.  There  are  cities  in  America 
that  have  been  built  entirely  on  pig,  and  the 
American  pork-packing  interest  appears  to 
keep  quite  half  the  country  going.  But  how 
have  these  things  been  accomplished?  Cer- 
tainly not  by  the  breeding  and  rearing  of 

183 


THE    WILD    IRISHMAN 

single  pigs  in  people's  houses.  No,  the 
American  Irish  have  gone  in  for  pig-keeping 
on  wholesale  and  colossal  lines.  They  have 
turned  the  gentleman  that  pays  the  rent  out 
of  the  house  into  fields  and  pens,  they  have 
made  a  business  of  the  feeding  and  fattening 
of  him,  and  they  have  erected  mammoth 
factories  wherein  he  may  be  slaughtered  and 
salted  down  by  the  thousand.  Ireland  might 
with  indisputable  advantage  take  a  leaf  out 
of  the  bulky  lard-stained  book  of  Chicago. 
Irish  bacon  will  always  command  quite  as 
good  a  price  as  the  best  American  that  was 
ever  exported.  The  English  market  for  it 
is  practically  inexhaustible,  but  apparently 
nobody  but  the  Americans  has  enterprise  or 
courage  enough  to  exploit  that  market.  In 
America  the  pigs  for  the  packing  trade  are 
understood  to  be  fed  on  apples  and  pea-flour, 
and  I  have  seen  it  suggested  that  because  they 
are  amply  supplied  with  these  staples,  the 
American  pig-feeders  will  always  have  the 
advantage  of  possible  competitors.  There 
184 


PIGS 

are  neither  apples  nor  pea-flour  in  Ireland; 
but  there  is  the  potato,  and  if  ever  an  article 
of  food  was  designed  for  a  special  sort  of 
beast,  the  potato  was  designed  for  the  pig. 
The  Irish  should  endeavor  to  remember  that 
if  the  potato  have  any  virtue  at  all,  it  was 
intended  for  the  feeding  of  pigs,  and  not 
of  human  beings.  The  English  farmer  does 
not,  when  the  dinner  hour  draws  nigh,  lead 
forth  his  wife  and  children  to  his  hay-cham- 
ber for  nutriment,  and  the  Irishman  should 
have  just  as  small  a  gustatory  regard  for  his 
store  of  potatoes.  It  is  pig-feed,  my  dear 
Patrick,  pig- feed,  and  not  victuals  at  all.  If 
the  English  peasantry  were  to  take  to  a  diet 
of  chopped  hay  and  husks  to-morrow,  the 
English  landlords  would  not  lift  a  little  finger 
to  prevent  them,  and  within  a  twelvemonth 
they  would  adjust  matters  by  putting  up  rents 
all  round.  So  long  as  you,  the  low  wild  Irish, 
choose  to  be  content  with  the  same  diet  as 
your  household  pet,  so  long  may  you  remain 
content,  and  so  long  will  the  landlords  look 
13  185 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

to  it  that  you  get  no  other  food.  I  do  not 
believe  for  a  moment  that  Ireland  is  going 
to  be  regenerated  on  political,  measure- 
making  Parliamentary  lines.  Her  regenera- 
tion will  have  to  come  out  of  herself.  So 
much  of  it  as  has  already  been  accomplished 
has  come  wholly  out  of  herself,  and  not  out 
of  legislation  at  all.  The  rest  will  follow  if 
the  Irish  people  have  a  mind  to  deal  as 
straightly  with  themselves  in  the  future  as 
they  have  dealt  with  themselves  in  the  past. 
And  I  should  say  that  at  all  costs  the  potato- 
and-pig  habit,  as  it  now  exists  in  Ireland, 
should  be  broken,  and  got  rid  of,  and  utterly 
wiped  out. 


186 


CHAPTER   XX 

EMIGRATION 

WHEN  Ireland  desires  to  sup  the  sweeter 
drops  out  of  the  cup  of  sorrow,  she  has  a 
way  of  babbling  about  exiles  from  Erin,  and 
that  kind  of  thing.  That  her  population  has 
been  greatly  reduced  by  emigration  cannot  be 
denied;  neither  can  one  get  away  from  the 
fact  that  the  true-blooded  Irishman  has  a  pe- 
culiar affection  for  the  soil  on  which  he  was 
born,  and  that  the  pains  of  expatriation  have 
for  him  a  special  and  almost  intolerable 
poignancy.  But  excepting  as  it  bears  upon 
the  peace  of  mind  of  individuals,  on  the 
breaking-up  of  homes,  and  the  wrenching  of 
family  ties,  I  do  not  think  that  the  emigra- 
tion which  it  is  the  fashion  so  to  deplore  has 
been  at  all  a  bad  thing  for  Ireland.  It  is 
clear  that  if  the  country  is  incapable  of  sup- 
187 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

porting  adequately  the  mass  of  the  people 
now  resident  in  it,  the  persons  who  have  left 
it  for  fresh  woods  and  pastures  new  are  on 
the  whole  to  be  congratulated.  If  it  be  con- 
tended that  it  is  shameful  that  a  man  should 
be  compelled  to  leave  his  native  country  be- 
cause that  country  does  not  offer  sufficient 
scope  for  his  energies,  and  fails  to  provide 
for  him  the  means  of  rational  human  subsist- 
ence, I  should  say  that  Ireland  is  by  no  means 
singular  in  such  failure.  The  Scotch  emi- 
grate, and  boast  about  it.  "  Scotland  is  a 
stony  country,"  they  say,  "  there  are  plenty 
of  mouths  and  little  wherewith  to  fill  them; 
lo,  we  will  go  forth  into  the  undiscovered 
places  of  the  world,  and  seek  food  and  for- 
tune where  they  are  most  likely  to  be  found." 
The  Irish,  on  the  other  hand,  weep  and  wail, 
and  keen  about  it.  "  We  are  leaving  the  ould 
counthry,  ochone,  wirra,  wirra,  and  wirras- 
thrue!  I'll  sit  at  the  top  of  Vinegar  Hill, 
and  there  I'll  weep  till  I've  wept  my  fill,  and 
every  tear  would  turn  a  mill;  for,  bedad,  it's 
188 


EMIGRATION 

acrost  the  say  I'll  be  afther  goin',  and,  glory 
knows,  when  I'll  be  afther  comin'  back  again. 
Good-by,  Terence,  and  Bryan,  and  Pathrick, 
and  Judy,  and  Kathleen,  and  all  the  rest  of 
yez.  It's  me  that's  got  to  leave  yez,  and  may 
all  the  leading  fiends  assail  the  dhirthy  Gov- 
ernment !  "  And  so  on  and  so  forth.  Tears 
and  howls  are  the  Irish  emigrant's  stock-in- 
trade.  I  do  not  deny  that  this  is  wrong,  but 
it  seems  possible  that  a  great  deal  too  much 
capital  has  been  made  out  of  it,  both  by  the 
poets  and  by  the  politicians.  Excepting  at 
the  immediate  hour  of  embarkation,  the  Irish 
emigrant  makes  a  very  good  emigrant  indeed. 
If  his  emigration  takes  him  only  so  far  as 
England,  he  becomes  at  once  an  industrious, 
and  not  infrequently  a  fairly  prosperous,  mem- 
ber of  the  community.  If  his  emigration 
takes  him  to  America  the  same  thing  happens 
to  him,  and  he  has  been  known  to  blossom 
out  into  millionairedom.  Why  weep  for  him, 
why  recite  touching  poetry  about  him,  and 
why  call  the  Government  names  on  his  be- 
189 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

hoof?  It  is  the  people  who  are  left  at  home 
who  should  be  cried  over,  and  recited  over, 
and  whose  condition  should  provoke  the  ob- 
secration of  the  Government.  Of  course,  the 
real  truth  about  the  Irish  emigrant  is  that 
when  he  gets  into  a  new  country,  he  is  com- 
pelled to  fall  into  line  with  a  scheme  of  ex- 

% 

istence  which  is  far  in  advance  of  anything 
which  has  been  considered  possible  in  his  own 
country.  The  great  stumbling-blocks  of  his 
life,  namely,  the  potato  patch  and  the  pig, 
pass  forthwith  out  of  his  purview.  In  Eng- 
land he  must  live  like  a  civilized  being,  in  a 
house  erected  and  maintained  on  lines  which 
conform  to  the  requirements  of  County  Coun- 
cils and  sanitary  authorities;  very  naturally, 
too,  he  drops  into  the  English  view  as  to  diet, 
clothing,  recreations,  and  the  like,  and  to  se- 
cure these  things  he  is  compelled  to  work, 
maybe  twelve,  or  it  may  be  fourteen  hours 
a  day.  If  the  work  be  hard,  it  is  more  or 
less  regular,  and  the  pay  is  sure,  and,  from 
the  Irish  standooint,  princely.  In  America, 
190 


EMIGRATION 

with  anything  like  luck,  the  Irish  emigrant 
finds  himself  even  more  favorably  condi- 
tioned, and  if  he  possesses  an  ounce  of  sense 
— and  he  usually  does — there  are  chances  for 
him  which  lead  to  prosperity. 

At  home,  in  Ireland,  the  Irishman  of  the 
poorer  class,  and  even  of  the  middle  class,  is 
absolutely  without  opportunity.  He  must 
take  things  as  they  are,  and  if  he  ever  thinks 
about  such  matters  at  all,  resign  himself  to 
the  mean,  and  uninspiring  facts.  There  is 
nothing  in  Ireland  that  a  man  who  wishes 
to  get  along  in  life  may  do;  the  fact  being 
that  the  country  is  exhausted,  and  devoid  of 
the  elements  which  are  necessary  to  activity. 
And  it  seems  more  than  likely  that  this  state 
of  affairs  will  continue  for  many  years  to 
come.  Capital  that  is  not  backed  up  by  ar- 
rant greed  has  become  extremely  rare  of  late. 
There  is  little  hope  for  Ireland  in  the  modern 
sense,  unless  she  be  exploited,  and  for  some 
reason  or  other,  exploitation  is  nowadays  at- 
tempted only  by  persons  without  bowels,  who, 
191 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

with  all  their  exploiting,  succeed  only  in  en- 
riching themselves,  and  degrading  the  per- 
sons who  toil  for  them.  I  have  said  before 
that  Ireland's  true  regeneration  must  come 
from  within.  When  she  took  to  emigration 
she  began  practically  this  work.  For  years 
it  has  been  the  only  way  for  her;  it  will  go 
on  just  as  long  as  it  is  necessary  and  good 
for  her.  Meanwhile  the  people  at  home  must 
be  roused  from  their  apathy.  If  the  gentle- 
men who  periodically  stump  the  country  with 
a  miscellaneous  selection  of  political  and  re- 
ligious shibboleths  would  direct  some  of  their 
energy  and  oratory  to  the  social  and  intimate 
life  of  the  Irish  people,  they  might  yet  ac- 
complish for  Ireland  a  work  that  would  be  of 
real  benefit  to  her.  There  is  far  too  much 
complacency,  even  in  the  ranks  of  Ireland's 
best  wishers.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that 
the  main  body  of  the  people  of  Ireland  are 
peasants;  everybody  speaks  of  them  as  peas- 
ants, and  everybody  talks  of  them  as  peasants. 
When  Goldsmith  wrote  about  "  a  bold  peas- 
192 


EMIGRATION 

antry,  their  country's  pride,"  he  did  not  mean 
peasantry  in  the  same  way  that  the  glib  wri- 
ters and  talkers  of  our  own  day  mean  it.  The 
word  "  peasant,"  like  many  another  good 
word,  has  had  its  ups  and  downs,  and  for  the 
last  half-century,  if  not  for  a  longer  period, 
"  peasant,"  as  applied  to  an  Irishman,  has 
amounted  really  to  a  condemnation  and  an 
excuse.  "  Ah,  my  dear  sir,"  cry  the  wise, 
"  you  do  not  know  the  Irish  peasant !  "  If 
one  is  to  believe  all  that  one  hears,  the  Irish 
peasant  is  a  sort  of  inferior,  inhuman  crea- 
tion. Anything  is  good  enough  for  him,  and, 
like  the  dog  in  the  adage,  the  less  you  give 
him  and  the  more  you  kick  him,  the  better 
he  will  like  you.  One  never  hears  the  slack- 
est politician  of  them  all  talking  or  writing 
about  "  the  English  peasant."  It  is  "  the 
sturdy  men  of  Kent,"  "  the  hardy  men  of 
Yorkshire,"  and  "  comrades,"  and  "  fellow- 
workers,"  all  the  time.  These  men  eat  bacon 
and  cheese,  and  as  much  beef  as  they  can  lay 
tooth  upon;  also  they  drink  beer  in  and  out 

193 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

of  season  and  by  the  bucketful;  also  their 
children  are  reasonably  well-fed  and  reason- 
ably well-clad.  There's  not  the  smallest  boy 
in  England  but  travels  in  his  shoes.  Hence 
the  English  peasantry  retain  those  qualities 
of  boldness  and  masterfulness  and  independ- 
ence, without  which  a  peasantry  cannot  thrive. 
And  nobody  dare  call  them  "  peasants,"  nor 
offer  them  the  treatment  which  peasants  are 
commonly  supposed  to  delight  in.  The  Irish 
need  to  be  taught  that  they  are  a  race  of  men, 
and  not  merely  dreamers,  and  martyrs,  and 
kickable  persons.  And  the  first  thing  for  a 
proper  man  to  do  is  to  make  sure  that  him- 
self and  his  family  live  like  human  beings 
and  compass  the  food  and  shelter  and  decen- 
cies which  are  nowadays  considered  necessary 
to  human  beings.  The  Irish  politicians  have 
helped  Ireland  to  something  in  the  nature  of 
reasonable  government;  they  might  now  con- 
veniently lay  themselves  out  to  help  her  into 
something  that  resembles  reasonable  living. 
At  the  forthcoming  General  Election,  we  are 
194 


EMIGRATION 

told,  great  political  and  party  play  is  to  be 
made  with  that  ancient  and  bedraggled  ques- 
tion, Home  Rule.  The  friends  of  Ireland, 
and  the  friends  of  England,  fancy  that  they 
see  in  it  something  which  is  going  to  be  very 
good  for  Ireland.  In  point  of  fact  it  is  a 
matter  of  which  next  to  nothing  would  have 
been  heard,  had  not  Mr.  Balfour  stood  in 
sore  need  of  a  red  herring  to  drag  across  the 
idiot  noses  of  the  electorate.  From  Mr.  Bal- 
four's  point  of  view,  no  doubt,  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  Home  Rule  bogy  is  a  singularly 
adroit  move.  It  will  confuse  the  fiscal  tariff- 
mongers;  it  will  placate  the  dunder-headed 
Liberal  party,  and  it  will  tickle  the  Irish  to 
death.  But  any  man  who  believes  for  one 
moment  that  it  will  be  of  the  smallest  benefit 
to  Ireland  is  just  a  fool.  England  made  up 
her  mind  long  ago  that  Home  Rule  for  Ire- 
land was  a  sheer  impossibility;  and  what  is 
more  to  the  point,  Ireland  proper,  and  in  the 
mass,  is  of  the  same  opinion.  If  she  desires 
to  take  advantage  of  the  opportunities  which 

195 


THE   WILD    IRISHMAN 

a  General  Election  is  bound  to  provide  for 
her,  she  will  let  Home  Rule  severely  alone, 
and  base  her  demands  on  less  political,  but 
considerably  more  urgent  and  vital  things. 


(i) 


THE   END 


196 


MA  beautiful  romance  of  the  days  of  Robert  Burns." 

Nancy  Stair. 

A  Novel.  By  ELINOR  MACARTNEY  LANE,  author 
of  "  Mills  of  God."  Illustrated.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.50. 

"  With  very  much  the  grace  and  charm  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson,  the  author  of  '  The  Life  of  Nancy  Stair '  com- 
bines unusual  gifts  of  narrative,  characterization,  color,  and 
humor.  She  has  also  delicacy,  dramatic  quality,  and  that 
rare  gift — historic  imagination. 

" '  The  Life  of  Nancy  Stair '  is  interesting  from  the  first 
sentence  to  the  last ;  the  characters  are  vital  and  are,  also, 
most  entertaining  company;  the  denouement  unexpected 
and  picturesque  and  cleverly  led  up  to  from  one  of  the 
earliest  chapters;  the  story  moves  swiftly  and  without  a 
hitch.  Robert  Burns  is  neither  idealized  nor  caricatured ; 
Sandy,  Jock,  Pitcairn,  Danvers  Carmichael,  and  the  Duke 
of  Borthewicke  are  admirably  relieved  against  each  other, 
and  Nancy  herself  as  irresistible  as  she  is  natural.  To  be 
sure,  she  is  a  wonderful  child,  but  then  she  manages  to 
make  you  believe  she  was  a  real  one.  Indeed,  reality  and 
naturalness  are  two  of  the  charms  of  a  story  that  both 
reaches  the  heart  and  engages  the  mind,  and  which  can 
scarcely  fail  to  make  for  itself  a  large  audience.  A  great 
deal  of  delightful  talk  and  interesting  incidents  are  used  for 
the  development  of  the  story.  Whoever  reads  it  will  advise 
everybody  he  knows  to  read  it ;  and  those  who  do  not  care 
for  its  literary  quality  cannot  escape  the  interest  of  a  love- 
Btory  full  of  incident  and  atmosphere." 

"  Powerfully  and  attractively  written."— Pittsburg  Post, 
**  A  story  best  described  with  the  word  *  charming.' " 

—  Washington  Post. 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY,    NEW    YORK. 


WIT,  SPARKLING,  SCINTILLATING  WIT, 
IS,  THE  ESSENCE  OF 

Kate  of  Kate  Hall, 

By  ELLEN  THORNEYCROFT  FOWLER, 

whose  reputation  was  made  by  her  first  book, 
"  Concerning  Isabel  Carnaby,"  and  enhanced  by  her 
last  success,  "  Place  and  Power." 

"In  'Kate  of  Kate  Hall,'  by  Ellen  Thorneycroft  Fowler,  the  ques- 
tion of  imminent  concern  is  the  marriage  of  super-dainty,  peppery- 
tempered  Lady  Katherine  Clare,  whose  wealthy  godmother,  erstwhile 
deceased,  has  left  her  a  vast  fortune,  on  condition  that  she  shall  be 
wedded  within  six  calendar  months  from  date  of  the  testator's  death. 

"An  easy  matter,  it  would  seem,  for  bonny  Kate,  notwithstanding 
her  aptness  at  sharp  repartee,  is  a  morsel  fit  for  the  gods. 

"  The  accepted  suitor  appears  in  due  time  ;  but  comes  to  grief  at  the 
last  moment  in  a  quarrel  with  Lady  Kate  over  a  kiss  bestowed  by  her 
upon  her  godmother's  former  man  of  affairs  and  secretary.  This  inci- 
dent she  haughtily  refuses  to  explain.  Moreover,  she  shatters  the  bond 
of  engagement,  although  but  three  weeks  remain  of  the  fatal  six  months. 
She  would  rather  break  stones  on  the  road  all  day  and  sleep  in  a 
pauper's  grave  all  night,  than  marry  a  man  who,  while  professing  to  love 
her,  would  listen  to  mean  and  malicious  gossips  picked  up  by  tell-tales 
in  the  servants'  hall. 

"  So  the  great  estate  is  likely  to  be  lost  to  Kate  and  her  debt-ridden 
father,  Lord  Claverley.  How  it  is  conserved  at  last,  and  gloomy  appre- 
hension chased  away  by  dazzling  visions  of  material  splendor — that  is 
the  author's  well-kept  secret,  not  to  be  shared  here  with  a  careless  and 
indolent  public." — Philadelphia  North  American. 

"  The  long-standing  reproach  that  women  are  seldom  [humorists 
Seems  in  a  fair  way  of  passing  out  of  existence.  Several  contemporary 
feminine  writers  have  at  least  sufficient  sense  of  humor  to  produce  char- 
acters as  deliciously  humorous  as  delightful.  Of  such  order  is  the 
Countess  Claverley,  made  whimsically  real  and  lovable  in  the  recent 
book  by  Ellen  Thorneycroft  Fowler  and  A.  L.  Felkin,  '  Kate  of  Kate 
Hall.'  "—Chicago  Record-Herald. 

" '  Kate  of  Kate  Hall '  is  a  novel  in  which  Ellen  Thorneycroft  Fowler 
displays  her  brilliant  abilities  at  their  best.  The  story  is  well  constructed, 
the  plot  develops  beautifully,  the  incidents  are  varied  and  brisk,  and  the 
dialogue  is  deliciously  clever." — Rochester  Democrat  and  Chronicle. 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY,  NEW  YORK. 


LOVE.  MYSTERY.  VENICE. 


The  Clock  and  the  Key. 

By  ARTHUR  HENRY  VESEY.  12010.  Ornamental 
Cloth,  $1.50. 

This  is  a  tale  of  a  mystery  connected  with  an  old  clock. 
The  lover,  an  American  man  of  means,  is  startled  out  of 
his  sensuous,  inactive  life  in  Venice  by  his  lady-love's  scorn 
for  his  indolence.  She  begs  of  him  to  perform  any  task 
that  will  prove  his  persistence  and  worth.  With  the  charm 
of  Venice  as  a  background,  one  follows  the  adventures  of 
the  lover  endeavoring  to  read  the  puzzling  hints  of  the  old 
clock  as  to  the  whereabouts  of  the  famous  jewels  of  many 
centuries  ago.  After  following  many  false  clues  the  lover 
ultimately  solves  the  mystery,  triumphs  over  his  rivals,  and 
wins  the  girl. 

AMERICA. 

"  For  an  absorbing  story  it  would  be  hard  to  beat." — Harper's  Weekly. 

ENGLAND. 

"  It  will  hold  the  reader  till  the  last  page." — London  Times. 

SCOTLAND. 

•'  It  would  hardly  suffer  by  comparison  with  Poe's  immortal '  Gold  Bug.' " 
— Glasgow  Herald, 

NORTH. 

"  It  ought  to  make  a  record." — Montreal  Sun. 

SOUTH. 

"  It  is  as  fascinating  in  its  way  as  the  Sherlock  Holmes  stories — charming 
— unique." — New  Orleans  Picayune. 

EAST. 

"  Don't  fail  to  get  it."— New  York  Sun. 

WEST. 

"About  the  most  ingeniously  constructed  bit  of  sensational  fiction  that 
ever  made  the  weary  hours  speed." — St.  Paul  Pioneer  Press. 

"  If  you  want  a  thrilling  story  of  intrigue  and  mystery,  which  will  cause 
you  to  burn  the  midnight  oil  until  the  last  page  is  finished,  read  '  The  Clock 
and  the  Key.'  "—Milwaukee  Wisconsin. 

"  One  of  the  most  highly  exciting  and  ingenious  stories  we  have  read  for 
a  long  time  is  '  The  Clock  and  the  Key.'  "—London  Mail. 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY,     NEW    YORK. 


LOVE,  HONOR,  AND  BEAUTY. 

The  House  of  Hawley. 

By  ELMORE  ELLIOTT  PEAKE.  i2mo.  Orna- 
mental Cloth,  $1.50. 

Sweet  is  the  adjective  that  most  properly  applies  to  this 
entrancing  novel.  It  is  a  pure,  lovely  story  of  a  grand  old 
man,  a  beautiful  young  girl,  and  her  noble  young  lover. 
The  dainty  descriptions  of  the  heroine  and  her  friends  are 
so  crisp  and  vivid  that  the  reader  is  awe-stricken  at  the 
writer's  grasp  of  the  beautiful  in  life.  The  scene  is  laid  in 
southern  Illinois,  and  that  locality  will  henceforward  have 
a  definite  place  in  fiction. 

"  '  Egypt,'  better  known  to  geographers  as  a  region  of  southern  Illi- 
nois, is  seven  hours'  ride  from  Chicago  by  train,  but  a  century  apart  in 
customs  and  atmosphere.  Mr.  Peake  has  found  in  it  a  new  setting  for 
the  old  theme  of  true  love  never  running  smooth,  and  has  added  to  the 
leisurely  charm  of  the  story  by  close  character  drawing  of  the  unusual 
types  in  this  eddy  of  American  life." — Booklovers,  Philadelphia. 

"'The  House  of  Hawley,'  by  Elmore  Elliott  Peake  is  one  of  the 
'  homiest '  stories  we  have  met  in  a  long  while.  .  .  .  Instead  of  calling 
so  often  for  the  great  American  novel,  perhaps  we  should  give  more 
attention  to  the  many  good  American  novels,  of  which  '  The  House  of 
Hawley '  is  one,  containing  faithful  and  interesting  portrayal  of  life  in 
some  one  of  the  many  and  diversified  sections  of  the  country." 

—New  York  Globe. 

"  '  The  House  of  Hawley '  is  a  fresh,  readable  story  by  Elmore  Elliott 
Peake,  the  theme  of  which  is  laid  in  the  '  Egypt '  of  southern  Illinois. 
The  title  fits  better  than  usual,  and  the  characters  depicted  are  real 
people.  There  is  not  a  single  stick  of  dead  timber  among  the  various 
men  and  women." — Chicago  Record- Her  aid. 

"  If  you  have  ever  lived  in  southern  Illinois  or  the  Missouri  and 
Kentucky  neighborhoods  on  the  opposite  banks  of  the  Mississippi  and 
Ohio  rivers,  you  may  make  a  pleasant  holiday  trip  there  through  the 
pages  of  this  book.  The  word  pictures  are  as  faithfully  rendered  as  if 
done  by  the  lens  of  a  kodak." — Minneapolis  Times. 

"  There  is  not  a  dull  page  in  the  whole  book.  It  is  well  worth 
reading." — S/.  Louis  Star. 

D.    APPLETON     AND     COMPANY,     NEW    YORK. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 

DEC  4    1951 1 
MAY  31  1956 

JAN- 2 


Form  L-0 
25m-2,'43<6205> 


limp 

001238803    9 


